


Les Magiciens

by cruisedirector, Dementordelta



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Javert Survives, Beauxbatons, Character Death Fix, Community: snape_potter, Crossover, Falling In Love, First Time, Fluff and Crack, Français | French, Girls Doing Magic, Love Changes Everything, M/M, Magic Revealed, Male Friendship, Middle Aged Virgins, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Snape Lives, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-09
Updated: 2013-10-09
Packaged: 2017-12-28 23:06:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 25,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cruisedirector/pseuds/cruisedirector, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dementordelta/pseuds/Dementordelta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Instead of finding himself dead, Severus Snape found himself on a bridge in 19th century France, having to save yet another life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place during the final chapters of 'Deathly Hallows' and immediately afterward, so Harry is 17, if that counts as underage where you are. It was written for snape_potter's "First Time For Everything" fest; this is the first time Snape and Harry time-traveled together. Many thanks to esteven, thistlerose, and miss_m for beta and commentary; also thanks to accioslash, torino10154, and badgerlady for cleaning up the draft.

Severus Snape's last thoughts had been of Harry Potter -- all the things he had never told him, all the things he never would.

At least Potter had found him before the end. Though it was much too late to do more than gaze into Potter's eyes, to try to take that memory with him wherever he might be going, Snape was grateful for that much. While his life trickled away in the wake of the snake's attack, his final hope was that Harry would understand from the memories that Snape had given him the words that Snape had not been brave enough to say.

But at the moment his consciousness faded, Snape found himself not consigned to oblivion nor in the heaven where his father's mother had assured him that he would go. Instead he was standing on a bridge beneath a darkened sky.

The first thought of his afterlife was thus annoyance -- not that Snape believed that he was dead, not yet, anyway. This was no metaphysical bridge to eternity, for the rushing of the river below sounded ominous, and a warm, foul wind blew from the nearby bank. He had been saved by some magical means, for some purpose he was undoubtedly going to need to divine before he could get any rest. How typical that Dumbledore's portrait hadn't shared that information with him. 

To make matters even worse, a man stood directly in front of Snape, his hands clenched, body leaning forward, talking to himself. From all appearances, he was about to jump into the churning water below. It seemed that the reward for giving one's life to save the Chosen One was to be flung from the promise of peaceful, eternal repose onto a bridge to save someone else. 

"Stop!" shouted Snape. "Are you insane?"

The man's head swiveled in Snape's direction. He appeared to be dressed in some sort of uniform, though he had removed his hat. An expression of anguish was replaced with one of anger as he glanced at Snape's clothing. " _Sorcier_ ," the stranger spat. " _Où venez-vous? Qu'est-ce que vous avez dit?_ "

Bloody hell, did it have to be French? Snape hadn't studied the language since before he had gone to Hogwarts, and the French potion-makers he had encountered at conferences had all been unbearably arrogant. " _J'ai dit pour vous désistons-nous_!" he tried.

The stranger lowered his brows. "We stop -- what?"

Thank Merlin the man spoke English. "YOU stop," barked Snape. "Don't jump. Since it looks from here like that's what you were planning to do. Don't make me cast a Body-Bind Curse." The man's expression was blank. Perhaps his English was as poor as Snape's French, or perhaps he was a Muggle despite having recognized Snape as a wizard. "I can't speak your language," Snape tried to explain. " _Tous les français sont mal._ "

"Not all of them," muttered the stranger. "Who are you? Did Valjean send you?"

"I am Severus Snape. Is Valjean a Death Eater?" Snape knew that the Malfoys had relatives in France, probably supporters of the Dark Lord. Instinctively his fingers went to his throat, where he felt two small puncture wounds. They were not bleeding. It was as though the Dark Lord's snake had bitten him years before, in some other life.

The man's eyes rolled skyward. " _Ne mentez pas à moi_ ," he scowled. "I don't know what you mean by Death Eater. Valjean was not in the sewers to steal from the bodies. He was trying to rescue an idiotic boy from the barricade."

None of this made any sense to Snape. "Very well, is Valjean a wizard? And who are you?"

"Don't play the fool with me, _Sorcier_. I was born with scum like you. I am Javert, Inspector of the First Class. A policeman, as you can see. A former policeman who failed in his duty to apprehend the wizard Valjean." His attention turned once more to the churning water below.

Snape tried to reach discreetly into his robes for his wand, but the wand wasn't there. Of course. Voldemort had killed Snape over a wand, so surely Voldemort wouldn't have left Snape's own wand within reach, even in whatever bizarre afterlife this was in France. Well, no matter, Snape had been able to perform a wandless Freezing Charm since the summer after his fifth year, when his father had raised a hand to hit him for being defiant. "I have never heard of Valjean, nor of you, and I can't have you killing yourself until I get some answers." Without another word to the unknown Inspector, Snape immobilized him.

Then he took a moment to look around. Though the night had not yet given way to the dawn, some structures were familiar. He had twice visited Paris, once for a potions convention and once while traveling to Beauxbatons Academy of Magic for a conference on the teaching of defensive spells. Based on the proximity of the Palais de Justice, he was fairly certain that they were standing on the Pont au Change. Though the city seemed eerily silent, without a single plane overhead, he knew it would not be a difficult matter to Apparate to the gardens by Notre Dame cathedral. It was the only way he could travel, since naturally Snape wasn't so fortunate as to have a broom. 

The stranger, Javert, looked almost comical leaning out over the Seine as if he would fall were he not frozen in place. Stepping close, Snape grabbed the former policeman's rigid arm and announced, " _Écoutez-moi-même!_ I don't know what any of this is about, but there must be a reason I arrived here just in time to stop you from jumping, so you're coming with me until we discover what it is."

Without another word, he whisked the man away from his intended watery grave, using Side-Along Apparition to put them behind the cathedral, where he hoped the noise of their arrival would be masked by the other noises of the city. When he lifted the charm that held Javert immobile, the policeman promptly fell to his knees, retching.

"Haven't you ever Apparated before?" If the man was a Squib, that might explain his depression.

"No I haven't," the man gasped, clutching at the nearest plant. Unfortunately it was a rose bush, and he cut his hand on the thorns. 

"I could heal that, if I had my wand."

Javert's eyes went wide, distracted from his pain and nausea. "Wands are illegal."

"What are you talking about?" asked Snape, sniffing indignantly, certain that Javert had spoken the wrong English word. Then he sniffed the air again. There was not a trace of petrol nor any other familiar Muggle pollutant, though even here he could smell the sewer. Perhaps Javert's clothes had been in contact with the filthy water. He heard no motorboats, no cars, no indication of modern life at the center of one of the largest cities in Europe. A terrible thought seized Snape. "What is the date?"

He held out a handkerchief, which Javert wrapped around his bleeding fingers. "It is the seventh of June." At Snape's scowl, he added, "1832."

This was even worse than merely finding himself in Paris. Even without a broom, Snape was capable of getting himself across the Channel, but he didn't have the faintest idea how to return himself to his own era without a Time-Turner and he had never heard of a wizard using one to skip through so many decades even under an illegal enchantment. At least by 1832 the Reign of Terror was over. "Does France currently have an Emperor or a King?" asked Snape irritably. He had enough trouble remembering French wizarding history, let alone the history of the Muggles who had fought for power while the people starved.

"Louis Philippe is the King of the French," snarled Javert, getting to his feet. 

Wearily Snape rubbed a hand over his face. Wasn't it enough that he had just died -- very well, just nearly died -- to try to save a Boy Who Lived who barely knew he was alive? Was he to be subjected to yet another crisis? "From the fact that I'm still here, I'm guessing that saving your miserable life isn't the reason I was flung back in time to your era. You had better tell me why you are important, and who this Valjean person is. Not to mention where I can get a cup of coffee."

Much to Snape's chagrin, he did not get coffee until hours later, when the cafés finally began to open -- later than usual in many cases because of the violence of the night before. Without his wand, he didn't dare risk provoking anyone, lest an ordinary-looking Muggle prove to be a wizard in disguise in this barbaric era. 

And he did have to listen to Javert's entire life story, culminating in the moment when Snape had prevented him from flinging himself off a bridge for the silliest reason Snape had ever heard: because of a moral dilemma. And not even the sort that involved one's having to pretend to be loyal to a Dark Lord while secretly working to undermine him, to protect the son of one's oldest friend with whom one had managed to fall in love despite fearing that the boy might always be an arrogant prat like his father, only to discover that the boy might have to die nonetheless in order for the Dark Lord to be defeated.

"Let me get this straight," he said incredulously to Javert. "You have been pursuing this Valjean since you learned that he was the powerful ex-convict with whom you were obviously obsessed while he was posing as an honest mayor, before he eluded you to rescue a child? And you were going to kill yourself so that you wouldn't have to arrest Valjean, whom you have concluded is not the terrible man you always believed him to be, even though you also believe that in addition to being a thief, he is a wizard?"

"I know that he is a wizard. I have seen him do things no ordinary man could do." Javert's eyes fogged over, remembering. Snape didn't think that even Lavender Brown had ever looked so lovestruck.

"Based on what you've told me, you are the Squib son of a witch who told fortunes and a father whose greatest crime may have been performing magic that harmed no one yet earned him a life sentence from fearful Muggles. Rather than question one point of stupidity in a legal code that's going to be amended ten times before the end of your own century, you would rather die?"

"It isn't that simple!" snapped Javert, launching into a long diatribe about how, being born outside society, he had always believed that his choices were either to defend the law with all his being or to descend into crime himself. It always came back to Valjean, Valjean, Valjean, the strongest, most impressive, most dangerous, most sly, most powerful man Javert had ever laid eyes on. Snape couldn't tell whether it was the fact that English was not Javert's first language that kept the policeman from realizing that he was being mocked when Snape kept asking, "Just how strong _is_ this Valjean fellow?" or whether Javert merely believed that everyone else must be as fascinated by the very idea of Valjean as was Javert.

"Perhaps you should see him yourself," Javert said irritably when they had finally found an open café, only to realize that neither of them had any money. Though wandless levitation charms were not Snape's strongest skill, he managed to swipe a few gold coins from a man who looked like he possessed plenty more where they came from, then pretended to have discovered the coins in his own pocket so as to avoid presenting Javert with another moral crisis.

The coffee was not the best that Snape had ever had, but after a sleepless night involving an attack by a cursed snake and the possible end of the world, it was the most welcome. "Wait," Snape said, holding up a hand before Javert could launch into another description of the handsome, rugged features of Jean Valjean. "Do you mean to tell me that you know where he is?"

"Yes. He gave me his address."

"Why didn't you say so? We must go there at once." Snape hoped that he had stolen enough coins to pay for a carriage. Now that he knew he was stuck without a wand in an era when magic had been outlawed, he preferred not to risk Apparating again. "Maybe this Valjean person is the reason I've been sent back to this miserable time without proper toilets."


	2. Chapter 2

When they arrived at the Rue de l'Homme Armé, Valjean ignored Snape completely. "Javert," he intoned to the policeman in the same manner with which one might greet Death - not, as in _The Tale of the Three Brothers_ , as an old friend, but as most rational people face their mortal end, with the sort of terror that Snape had felt when he believed the Dark Lord's snake had killed him. "I thought you would come back. Please, let me tell Cosette --"

"I am not here to arrest you," Javert said in an equally dismal tone. "I am no longer a policeman."

Valjean looked astonished at this. Before the two of them could start comparing notes on their miseries, which with Snape's luck would end with declarations of solidarity if not treacly confessions of mutual love, Snape interrupted them. "I asked Javert to bring me here." Rather than waste time on long explanations, he focused his eyes on the unlit fireplace until the embers burst into full flame.

At last he had both Valjean's and Javert's full attention. "What did you do?" demanded Valjean. "I have never been able to master that. Only my --" He had begun to gesture behind himself before he realized what he was saying.

Javert barked a laugh. "I might have known the girl was a witch. No wonder you took such an interest in her."

"What girl?" asked Snape. Valjean and Javert exchanged assessing looks. "Speak, before I put a spell on you to make you talk."

The nervousness with which both men stepped away from him was rather gratifying. "My daughter," Valjean replied finally.

"She is not his daughter." That was Javert.

"She believes she is my daughter and I beg you not to tell her otherwise. I am the only father she has ever known. Javert knows --"

"I know nothing," said Javert in the same dismal tone he had used earlier. "I am only here because this wizard from the future compelled me."

Abruptly Snape realized that both men were speaking in French, yet he could understand them and Valjean had understood him. Either he had cast _translatio_ without realizing it or Valjean must have done so. "I have come a very long way through time and space," he explained. "I have no idea how or why. There must be a reason I was meant to save this man's life."

Valjean's expression grew alarmed. "Javert, are you unwell? I wondered, when you disappeared so suddenly..."

At that moment a young woman burst into the room. "Papa, when may we visit Marius?" She froze when she saw the gathering of men near the door.

Valjean cleared his throat. "Allow me to introduce my...my friends," he said awkwardly. Then he too froze. In the confusion about whether or not he would be arrested, he had not managed to learn Snape's name. 

Javert came to his rescue. "This is Mr. Snape. And I am --" He hesitated for only a moment before addressing Cosette. "I am Mr. Javert."

"You're dressed like a policeman," observed the girl. She looked old enough to be a sixth or seventh year at Hogwarts, perhaps even to have completed her studies. Her head dipped demurely as she added, "I am Cosette Fauchelevent."

Finally Snape had been given a clue about what he was doing there -- in the apartment, and in France in the 1830s. "Fauchelevent! Not a very common name," he said gleefully. "I presume that you are Cosette Fauchelevent of Beauxbatons." As a visitor to the school, he had been regaled with the story of Baroness Pontmercy, née Cosette Fauchelevent, the Muggle-born witch who had saved the school, rescuing all the students and thousands of others when the Mediterranean Sea had flooded southwest France.

This Cosette, however, looked entirely blank. "What is Beauxbatons?" Valjean's brows were as furrowed as the girl's.

Before Snape could reply there was a clamor and a shout outside. "It's the police," said Valjean at once, his voice rising in panic.

"No one knows that you are here," Javert said, and it sounded as though he was trying to reassure Valjean. All three of them moved toward the window, but Snape got there first.

He sighed, peeking through the sheers. "It's Harry Potter." He might have known that all this had something to do with Potter. It seemed that everything in Snape's life was destined to have something to do with Potter.

"Is he a policeman?" asked Valjean, standing beside him and peering outside.

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "He is a nuisance," he replied, "but I suppose we should get him down off the fence."

Potter's shirt had caught on one of the iron spikes of the formidable fence surrounding the house. Whatever Valjean was afraid of, he had prepared to keep it out. Snape and Javert reached the door and stepped outside just in time to see Potter wriggle out of his shirt and drop the few feet to the ground, leaving the shirt dangling like a flag.

Wrapping his arms around his admittedly manfully developed chest, Potter turned toward them. "Pardon me, I --" he began, lifting one hand to adjust his askew glasses. "Professor Snape? What are you doing here?"

Behind Snape, Cosette gasped but didn't look away from Potter's bare chest. Snape resisted the urge to take off his own cloak and drape it over Potter's shoulders, away from her unabashed gaze. "I believe I should ask you the same question," replied Snape, though his heart had sunk at the sight of Potter, shirtless or not. This was no time for his own feelings to be addressed. "I surmise your bid to save the wizarding world has gone awry?"

At the gasp, Potter had flushed and pulled his wand out of his pocket. " _Accio_ shirt," he said. The dangling bit of fabric lifted off the spike and flew into his hand.

"Are you mad, boy?" Valjean hissed, shoving the others aside and leaping in front of Potter to shield him from any possible view from the street.

Potter pulled the shirt over his head and frowned. "Why is he speaking French?"

"Your friend will get us all put in prison," Javert hissed, moving to stand beside Valjean, Snape supposed to help block the view and not just because he wished to be near the other man.

Still frowning, Potter kept his wand balanced lightly in his hand in a stance that under other circumstances would have pleased Snape. "Professor?" he asked, looking first at the two men looming behind him, then at Cosette. "Not that I'm not really glad to see you alive, but I think something really weird is going on."

Snape tried not to take the 'glad to see you' part too literally. "As always, your grasp of the situation is tentative at best." His rebuke lacked its usual bite and he could see that Potter noticed. "I believe it will make these men, my...associates, more comfortable if you put away your wand."

Potter obeyed with gratifying speed. "Is this some kind of fancy dress party in heaven?" He looked down at himself, then at Cosette. "At least I have clothes on this time," he murmured. Even by old-fashioned wizarding standards, Cosette's attire and that of the Frenchmen would have stood out on the grounds of Hogwarts.

Valjean was shepherding them inside, casting nervous looks over his shoulder and trying to get them to hurry, though Snape had seen no one on the street at this hour. "Why does your young man speak of heaven?" Valjean asked in French once the door was safely closed behind them.

"He isn't my --" Snape began.

"I didn't know you spoke French, Professor," Potter said. He had stayed close to Snape but his hand was never far from his wand pocket.

"I don't," Snape said, in French, waving his hand toward Potter's wand. "Perform a translation spell. I know Professor McGonagall taught you one during the Tri-Wizard Tournament."

"Oh, right." Potter pulled his wand out again, eliciting gasps from Javert, Valjean, and Cosette. "What?" he asked, bewildered. "You aren't Muggles. Even I can see that." He cast the required spell.

In English, Snape said, "In this era, wands are illegal, as is magic. As I recall, during the period of French history leading up to the Revolution, wizard involvement in Muggle politics led to violations of the Statute of Secrecy, and successive governments treated witches and wizards not much better than Americans did during the century before."

"In this era?" Potter said, tucking the wand away. He looked around the entryway of Valjean's house and again at Cosette's long dress. "Heaven _is_ in France?"

"I think you had better tell me how you got here," Snape said, not liking the lingering glances Cosette was flashing Potter's way. "Alone."

"A moment of your time, sir." Valjean had noticed Cosette staring at Potter as well. "I must protect my daughter. I don't know why her name should be familiar to you, but I dare not risk --"

"Oh, Papa, they already know. Don't you see? These are not people from whom we must hide." Cosette turned a brilliant smile on Potter, and at once Snape understood that she was not interested in his shirtless appearance so much as his ability to perform magic. "May I see your wand?"

Valjean and Javert both stepped forward as if they would prevent this, but Potter, with the impulsiveness that had caused so much trouble for everyone who had ever met him, returned her smile and handed her the wand. She studied it for a moment, then drew a circle in the air with it. "Don't --" Potter and Snape began together.

They were too late. A sound like rushing wind accompanied the burst of sparks that flew from the wand, blowing open all the doors. Quickly Javert rushed to close the front door while a nervous-looking woman in much simpler clothing appeared at the rear entrance to the room. "It's all right, Toussaint," Valjean called to her while Cosette, emitting a small shriek, handed the wand back to Potter. With a glare at Snape, as if any of this was _his_ fault, Valjean added, "Toussaint, would you mind bringing us coffee?"

That, at least, was a welcome suggestion. "Put that thing away, Potter, before you get someone else killed." Three heads swiveled to look at him, and Snape muttered, "Someone besides me. Now, do you mind explaining why neither of us is dead?"

"How should I know?" asked Harry. "One minute Vol --"

"When will you learn to stop saying his name!"

"Fine. One minute You-Know-Who is aiming his wand at me, and the next --" He peered at Valjean, Javert, and Cosette, who had gathered into a protective huddle behind a chair. "I've been very rude, haven't I." Potter stuck out his hand. "I'm Harry Potter, from Hogwarts."

Valjean was the first to respond. "Ultime Fauchelevent," he said, taking Potter's hand as if uncertain whether he was expected to shake it or to bow. "This is my daughter, Cosette."

"Cosette Fauchelevent? From Beauxbatons?" Potter turned to look at Snape, who had been studying Javert, trying to figure out why Javert called the man who had just introduced himself as Fauchelevent by the name of Valjean. Snape shook his head fractionally, and Potter grinned brightly. "Ah. Different Cosette Fauchelevent." He looked suspicious, however. "Neither one of you is a Muggle. You can do magic with my wand, and you --" He studied Valjean. "You have some kind of wards on this house. Obviously it's not Unplottable, but I could feel them when we came through the door." Potter turned to Javert. "And you...you're not a Muggle, either."

"I am not entirely certain what a Muggle is," Javert retorted. "I presume it means one who does not perform feats of sorcery." He shot a look at Valjean, who was staring at him in return. "As I told Mr. Snape, my mother told fortunes, and my father was a sorc -- a convict." He said this as if the fact shamed him. "I have performed no illegal spells since I was old enough to understand the law."

Snape frowned at Javert. "I thought you couldn't do magic."

"I choose not to do magic," barked Javert. "Just as I choose not to be a liar or a thief."

Sensing the tension, Potter smiled at Cosette. "A Muggle is a person born without any magical ability, like most of the people in the world. Apart from stories and old legends, Muggles have no idea that anyone can do magic. But sometimes a witch or wizard is born to non-magical parents, like my mum." His eyes rose to meet Javert's. "If your mother was a witch and your father was a wizard, and you can do magic when you do choose, doesn't that make you a wizard?"

At that moment the rear door opened, and the woman dressed in what Snape guessed to be servant's clothes carried in a tray of food. Though Valjean still looked extremely nervous, he gestured at the chairs, despite the fact that there were not enough for everyone present. "I suppose we had better sit down."

Potter promptly dropped to the floor, sitting and crossing his legs. He glanced from Valjean to Snape. "You don't know these people, either?" he asked.

"Apart from the name of Fauchelevent, I had never seen nor heard of any of them before I found Mr. Javert about to fall off a bridge and prevented him," Snape replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Javert's chin drop. At once Valjean caught Javert's arm, leading him to one of the chairs. "I don't have the faintest idea why we are here, nor how we got here, nor what we are supposed to do here." He frowned at Potter. "You were a dismal pupil at History of Magic. How do _you_ know the name of Fauchelevent?"

"Why were you looking at my marks in my other classes?" Potter shot back before shrugging a bit. "Cosette Fauchelevent was the name of Fleur Delacour's great-great-something grandmother on the side that's not Veela. She's very proud of her." He glanced at Cosette, who was studying Potter avidly. "Are we supposed to save her or make sure she marries the right person or something?"

"Marius Pontmercy?" asked Cosette eagerly. 

This time Snape did not attempt to be discreet about telling Potter to be silent. "Since we are from your future, it is necessary that you tell us what has occurred in your time, not the other way around," he barked at the girl. Then he whirled on Javert. "Let's start with you, since Potter and myself both appeared in proximity to you. Have you been suppressing your magic your entire life?"


	3. Chapter 3

Two hours and four cups of coffee later, Snape felt as if he had learned only that 19th century French adolescents were just as impossible as 20th century English adolescents...and that Javert was obviously just as besotted with Valjean as Cosette was with the man whom both Snape and Harry knew to be her future husband, Baron Marius Pontmercy. They had not been speaking for long when Valjean banished Cosette from the conversation, apparently afraid that she might discover one of the dozens of secrets he had been keeping from her for nearly all her life.

"It was necessary," Valjean said in a low voice. "I had many years of experience being punished for using magic, and she is much more powerful than I am -- I have known that since the night I met her, when I found her bringing a bucket of water from a well by floating it three feet off the ground." He cast a baleful look at the other Frenchman. "When I was in prison, Javert was always testing me, giving me tasks to do that would have been impossible for an ordinary man."

"I knew what you were," Javert retorted wearily. "I was born inside a jail. I was born with --" He paused, regarding Potter. "As I have told you, my mother could tell fortunes, and my father could turn one loaf of bread into ten. Whenever he did so, it was assumed he had stolen them."

To have learned so much control with no wand and no training impressed Snape. "You never tested your own abilities?" he asked Javert.

Javert's face reddened above his beard. "On one or two occasions, without meaning to, I was able to disguise myself completely. I did not realize that I had done it until I discovered that no one recognized my face. But..." He looked chagrined. "Those with magical ability are not as easily convinced."

"You don't share your mother's ability to read tea leaves, then?" A pity, thought Snape. A bit of divination would be helpful at the moment. Potter was sitting in the corner with Cosette on a pair of poufs transfigured from a couple of handkerchiefs, trying to teach her _Wingardium Leviosa_ and other spells that first-year students learned. Her father looked both pleased and terrified about the speed with which she mastered them. Perhaps Cosette Fauchelevent, savior of Beauxbatons, had learned everything she knew about magic from the Chosen One, sent into the past to teach her. To Javert, Snape added, "I still can't fathom why you value your duty to Muggles who scoff at your abilities so greatly that you would rather kill yourself than let this man go free."

Valjean's hand shot out, grabbing Javert's wrist. "You didn't deliberately try to jump into the Seine!"

"That would be a sin," replied Javert at once, but his voice faltered and he lowered his gaze. He seemed lost in the sight of Valjean's fingers around his wrist. Without looking up, he said, "It was my duty to arrest you, yet I could not put a good man in jail. Without my duty, I am nothing."

Valjean gave Javert's hand a squeeze. "You are not nothing to God, Inspector. Nor to me."

Snape's mouth dropped open but he managed -- barely -- to avoid the snort building up inside him. Just as he had suspected, Valjean seemed to be just as besotted with Javert as Javert was with him. Some instinct made him look over his shoulder at Potter, who was surreptitiously keeping Cosette from hearing their conversation but apparently was listening in himself. Potter had a ridiculously sappy look on his face, which disappeared when he realized Snape was looking at him. He flushed and looked away.

"You must commit no sin on my account," murmured Valjean, his fingers lingering over Javert's hand as he patted it with what Snape supposed was supposed to be reassurance but looked instead like the prelude to another sin.

Javert was still looking down. Shaking his head, he said, "I do not deserve your consideration or your kindness."

"There is no help for it, for you have both," Valjean replied at once. Snape lost the battle with his snort. Both men looked up at him as if they had forgotten he was in the room.

" _If_ we could get back on message," he urged, "we still have the question of why I was brought here."

"And me," Potter piped up, alerting them that the Silencing Charm was off the corner he shared with Cosette. They all turned and looked at him. "I mean, I wasn't dead. At least I don't think so -- I've been dead before and this doesn't feel like that." He smiled a bit shyly. "I was doing really well, in fact. Vol-- er, the Dark Lord had his wand pointed at me." He demonstrated with his own wand, though Cosette seemed reluctant to relinquish it. "I had just deflected his curse --" He frowned in recall. "And I _think_ he burst into ash or something."

Snape frowned. Not that he was in the least sorry to hear that his former master had come to a sorry end, but it didn't sound like Potter was actually dead, though he was here, with Snape, in this afterlife.

Potter's gaze turned to Snape. "And you, Sn-- er, sir, I'm pretty sure you were dead." Valjean and Javert both made the sign of the cross. "But you look like you don't have a mark on you."

Once again Snape touched the place on his neck that felt like two scarred spots. He hadn't had a chance to examine himself in a mirror, but he suspected the spots were exactly the width of snake fangs. He leaned back in his chair. "A powerful magical explosion could be unpredictable enough to disrupt --" He looked around the parlor. "Well, everything. Look what happened the last time the Dark Lord's physical body was destroyed. If his soul, too, was destroyed --

Again Valjean made the sign of the cross. Javert was frowning, and Cosette looked puzzled. "It was," Potter said with a finality that Snape believed.

"Are you certain you smelled ash?" Snape asked.

Potter nodded. "Smoke and burst of light and ashes, like a dragon had burnt everything around us."

Despite their predicament, Snape felt unaccountably lighter of spirit. The Dark Lord was dead. So was Snape, but he wasn't bothered much by it at the moment. And Potter, presumably, was alive.

"I saw a dragon once," Cosette said into the silence. Everyone turned to look at her. "When I was a little girl." She adjusted the long drape of the flounces on her skirt. "It flew around a great castle I saw in the clouds."

"Castle in the..." Potter began, clearly puzzled.

"Beauxbatons Academy," said Snape with a satisfied smirk. Since all of the others were looking at him with the same furrowed brows as Potter, he added, "A school for magic in the south of France, located in the Palace of Beauxbatons. It's not far from Cannes, though Unplottable, which means that no one could find it who didn't already know where to look. I'm told that children often 'see' the palace years before they receive letters of admission."

"I never received any letter," protested Cosette, though she glanced sharply at her father as she spoke.

Snape did not need to ask him whether Cosette had been sent such a letter; he knew that, had the school been determined to admit her, letters would have flown in her window or exploded out of her chimney whether her father wished for her to see them or not. "There must have been a reason," he said. "Perhaps, like Potter here, you were the subject of a prophecy. We know the name of Cosette Fauchelevent in our own time because she saved many lives."

"How?" asked Cosette eagerly, getting to her feet.

"It doesn't work like that. He's not allowed to tell you," Potter told her. He was frowning. "Could be that if you had gone to school there as a child, you wouldn't have met your husband or something like that. But Snape didn't show up here to rescue you -- he showed up to rescue Javert." Looking over at Snape, Potter asked, "Any ideas why?"

"Evidently there is some connection among the people in this room beyond the fact that Mr. Javert and Mr. Fauchelevent are of long acquaintance. Whatever it is, it's important enough to this young woman's future that someone saw fit to bring me back from the dead and to summon the Chosen One to set it right." Valjean still looked uneasy and Javert looked mortified. It was clear that Snape would get no useful information out of them with the girl present. "Miss Fauchelevent wishes to visit the boy who was injured in the uprising, yes? Why not allow Mr. Potter to escort her?"

"You expect me to send my daughter with a man who is a complete stranger to us and to this time?" demanded Valjean, while at the same time Cosette spoke:

"Yes, please, Papa! We can bring Toussaint."

Valjean paced the room in agitation. "It will be immediately obvious to anyone who looks at or speaks to Mr. Potter that he does not belong here. I am certain you will not be permitted to see young Pontmercy -- he was too gravely injured; he will need time to heal. This is madness, Cosette..."

"Give me your wand," ordered Snape. To his surprise, Potter handed him the wand immediately. It was a simple matter to transfigure Potter's clothes into something approximating Valjean's, with an oversized cravat and a coat that looked uncomfortably warm for the season. "I suggest that Miss Fauchelevent present you as her cousin. If you marry the Weasley girl, it will even be true."

"What? I'm not marrying Ginny!" Potter exclaimed.

"Ah, you have a true love, too." Cosette beamed at him.

Potter was blushing furiously. "Not a girl. I mean, I don't have a girlfriend. I don't know where Snape gets his ideas." He glanced at Valjean. "I promise you, sir, your daughter will be safe with me."

Valjean had cast an odd look from Potter to Snape and back again. "You have already taught her to break the law, using that wand," he muttered. "And the streets are still not safe."

"Potter will be able to protect her." Snape could scarcely believe he was saying it, but he added, "He is the most important wizard of his generation. I believe you can trust him to behave responsibly." He glanced at Potter and continued, only half-jokingly, "If he keeps his mouth shut."

"I'll only speak if spoken to," Potter promised, grinning at Snape. He looked very handsome -- that was to say, proper -- in his transfigured clothing.

Valjean still looked unhappy with the situation, but Cosette insisted, "I'm not a child. I would think you would be pleased to have me go out for a while. You and your friend the Inspector obviously have things you wish to discuss without me to overhear."

Looking at Javert, Valjean asked, "You trust these people?"

Javert glanced first at Potter, then at Snape. "I trust nobody who would use magic. But this man did save my life, for what reason I can't imagine."

"Very well. Take Toussaint with you. I will expect you home for dinner. And I expect Professor Snape to give me his word that if anything should go awry, he will find you both."

Snape managed not to roll his eyes. "I promise," he said. "Before you take the wand, Potter, we'll need a Refilling Charm on the coffee. And a Scouring Charm on the chamberpots."


	4. Chapter 4

The facts, as Snape managed to ascertain, were relatively straightforward. Valjean, who had taken the name of Fauchelevent for himself and his adopted daughter to hide their true identities, was the magically talented son of ordinary French peasants -- a Mudblood, Malfoy would have said scornfully, at least if he'd had a wand in his hand. If he hadn't, Valjean might have been able to fling him half the length of a Quidditch pitch despite his lack of training. Valjean had learned from an early age to hide his abilities, though his strength had enabled him to find steady work as a tree-pruner, a hay-maker, sometimes a day laborer mending fences. 

But he had been unable to save his parents from early deaths, then a blight and a famine had struck, there had been no money, there had been no food, and Valjean had broken a window without a scratch to steal bread for his sister's children. His sentence was doubled because he was accused of using sorcery to commit the crime, then nearly doubled again for his attempts to escape. Until he went to prison, Valjean had had no idea that there were others like himself. Not until he met a priest, who taught him that gifts given by God were holy when used to good purpose, did Valjean consider that he might not have been born to evil.

Unlike Valjean, Javert had been encouraged as a boy to use the magical talents he had inherited from a mother skilled in divination and a father gifted at transfiguration, though to the best of Javert's knowledge, neither had received formal training outside the community of bohemians to which they belonged. Javert had loathed being an outsider and grew to loathe his parents as well; he had vowed from a young age to obey the law, to shun magic and the people who practiced it, to escape. Ironically, the magic he abjured gave him the ability to sense when he was in the presence of another with magical abilities. He had recognized Valjean as a wizard from the first, both when they met in Toulon and again when they encountered one another in Montreuil-sur-Mer, though Javert had not been certain at first that the mayor who had made the town prosper seemingly by magic was the same man he had met in prison. Until Valjean had used his magic first to help Javert escape, then to save the boy Cosette had gone to visit, Javert had never considered that there might be any virtue in the man.

None of which explained what Snape -- or Potter -- was doing there.

There were no further answers forthcoming, despite several hours' worth of discussion, with breaks for luncheon and for Snape's having to prod Javert and Valjean to stop simply staring into each other's eyes at unexpected intervals. No amount of 'ahem'ing cut into their reveries, though Snape had dealt with years' worth of smitten hormonal teenagers. Yet, when he hinted -- broadly -- that they could do more than gaze at one another, both men looked startled that their mutual scrutiny had been witnessed and refused to look at one another for long stretches of time until, inevitably, their gazes would mingle again.

Finally he heard the carriage outside and jumped up to peer out of the window. Valjean followed him, looking relieved to see that their errant young people had returned. Javert sidled up beside Snape, pulling the lace curtain aside, studying as Potter alighted.

"He is very young," Javert commented while Valjean bustled off to inquire about dinner.

Snape wrinkled his nose, turning at the suspiciously bland tone. "Your point?"

Javert shrugged. "The most powerful wizard of a generation, you said?" He crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Snape.

Frowning, Snape assumed the same pose, having the gratifying sweep of robes to add gravitas to his arm-folding. "Again, your point?"

"Simply curious," replied Javert, peering over Snape's shoulder as Potter turned to help Cosette out of the carriage. "He defers to you."

"I am -- was -- his teacher," replied Snape, about to add that Potter deferred to no one, but Javert's expression made him itch for his wand and an untraceable Stinging Hex.

"You would die for him," Javert went on.

"I did die for him," Snape pointed out, resisting the urge to put his fingers over the puckered over scars on his neck. He was rewarded when Javert blanched. He heard the servant at the door and the chatter of voices in the outer hall and felt himself relaxing slightly when he also heard Potter's voice. He could feel the weight of Javert's smirk behind him.

"Is everything all right, sir?" Potter said, looking uncertainly from one to the other.

"I shall go and see if Val-- if Fauchelevent needs help," Javert said, excusing himself with a nod to Potter.

Potter waited until he'd gone to advance into the room. "You looked like you were fighting about something," he commented, still looking a bit uncertain.

"Nonsense. Simply comparing theories about our mutual predicament," replied Snape.

"Comparing theories, right," Potter said, "Well I have a bit of a theory, or the start of one at least."

"It's more than I have," Snape admitted, though he had meant to say the exact opposite.

Rubbing a hand through his hair, Potter had the grace not to look smug as he glanced again at the closed parlor door. "I spent all afternoon with Cosette and she's pretty in love with that Marius guy," he said.

Snape was about to make some comment about her dashing Potter's hopes for a flirtation in the past before he settled down with some fawning witch in their own time, but Potter's thought processes had always resisted Snape's scorn, and besides, he was interested in the conversation. It was better than Javert trying not to look at Valjean's chest.

"And we know they get married and she saves all those people," Potter went on. "But we know nothing about her father. What if what we're meant to do is connected to what happens to her father, which probably affects where she ends up and whether she uses magic, and it has something to do with his old friend Javert?"

"If that were the case, I would think that saving his life would be sufficient." Snape frowned. "Javert has not had enough training to teach a witch as naturally powerful as Cosette to control her magic. It must be significant that a wizard of your skills has been brought into contact with a talented young witch who has had no education in the magical arts."

"But you showed up where Javert was, not where Cosette was. And I didn't get here till after Javert and Valjean were in the same place. If we were just supposed to teach Cosette something she needs to know to get to Beauxbatons, it wouldn't have to be here and now. We could have appeared to her a month ago, or next week. But we got here the night Javert tried to jump off a bridge." Potter rubbed his hand through his hair in that familiar, by which Snape surely meant irritating, way he had. "Marius's grandfather likes Cosette, so I don't think we have to make sure their marriage happens. He was running around consulting with doctors, and Marius was mostly unconscious, so Cosette and I talked, and it sounds like her early life was kind of like mine -- she lived with people who hated her and made her work like a servant for them. She thinks Valjean doesn't think she remembers. "

"I am a fool," Snape muttered aloud without meaning to, reddening faintly when Potter cocked an eyebrow. "I have been assuming that teaching magic to one of these people, or all of these people, must be the reason we were brought here. But perhaps magic was only the means, not the end. As you have just pointed out, you have something in common with Cosette apart from being wizarding prodigies." He winced inwardly when Potter bit his lips to hide a grin. "As for myself and Javert, we both prefer..."

Abruptly Snape realized that he was about to ruminate aloud upon something that was none of Potter's business. He winced again, but Potter's focus had gone in an entirely different direction. "You tried to kill yourself?" Potter asked worriedly.

"Certainly not. I only meant that I also know what it is to desire -- " Coughing, Snape stalled to think. "To feel trapped by the conundrum of caring for and wishing to protect someone who may be beyond one's reach."

Potter's brows unfurrowed, though he still looked unhappy. "You mean my mum," he guessed. "It's different for these guys, though I think it might have been illegal to --"

Just then the door opened and Cosette reappeared. "My father thinks that you might be more comfortable if we went to a café for dinner. These rooms are small, and we have too few chairs."

Snape could not help rolling his eyes a bit. "Your wand?" he asked Potter, who looked uncertain, then handed it over. It took only moments for Snape to use an engorgement charm on the table and cast a replicating spell to provide enough chairs for everyone. Hearing the noise as they moved the furniture, Valjean stepped behind Cosette in the doorway and stared with a mixture of awe and fear as Snape added, "I can put a Refilling Charm on the wine."

"Could you produce food out of the air?" asked Valjean. "We could feed the entire city of Paris!"

"Unfortunately not," Snape admitted.

"Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration," added Potter, though he couldn't have hoped to impress anyone besides Snape with this knowledge. "You can Summon food from somewhere else, or you can multiply the amount of food, like Javert said his father could do. But you can't make it out of nothing."

"Then why have wizards never multiplied enough food to feed the starving?" asked Cosette.

"You already know the answer to that. As soon as Muggles find out there are wizards among them, they start making laws preventing them from using magic, if the wizards are lucky. If they're not, the Muggles start rounding them up and killing them."

It was a philosophical conundrum sufficient to provide a topic of conversation that lasted through dinner, with Valjean arguing in favor of the abolition of hunger while Javert insisted upon the need for the law to prevent a descent into chaos. Cosette watched them wide-eyed, as if it were as much a novelty for her to see her father engaged in animated conversation with a friend as much as it was for comparative strangers. Potter watched them as well, at times with a suspicious expression crossing his face, particularly on the occasions when Javert appeared to forget what he was about to say because he had become distracted watching Valjean sip wine or emphasize a point with a muscular bang of a fist to the table. 

Snape watched all of them, his own suspicion increasing that, whoever had arranged their unexpected meeting -- he still had a feeling that Dumbledore had had something to do with it -- whoever it was had been determined to put Javert in the path of a wizard not only from a place and time that did not abhor magic, but whose sexual orientation inclined toward other men.

"I guess we should find an inn or something," Potter said when they were all full and rather tired from debating magical philosophy -- all, that is, except for Cosette and the quiet maid Toussaint, who had watched raptly as Snape set the dishes to cleaning themselves. Since Valjean seemed certain of her loyalty, Snape felt that they had no reason not to trust her. At that point, Cosette and Toussaint excused themselves, presumably to get ready for bed.

Javert frowned at this. "You would have to give false names at an inn. And refrain from any use of magic. It might be safest if you remained here."

"I fear that we have imposed long enough --" began Snape, only to have Valjean cut him off.

"Javert is right. It would be better if you stayed here. Tomorrow I will investigate whether it is safe to return to the larger house at the Rue Plumet. But tonight you would have to sleep on the floor."

"That won't be a problem -- I can Transfigure the chairs into beds." Potter had pulled out his wand. "Er, Inspector? Will you be staying?"

"I am no longer an inspector," said Javert automatically. His eyes lowered. "If I return to my room, my superiors will know that I survived the night. I will be summoned to account for my actions."

"Can we use whatever spell Slughorn was using to hide in Muggle houses?" Potter asked Snape. "Then if the police come looking for him..."

Valjean was already shaking his head. "Stay here, my friend." He put a hand on Javert's shoulder. "We have all heard many remarkable things today. Think on them a while longer before you decide what course of action you wish to take."

"And where am I to sleep?" Javert demanded.

"I could use an Engorgio charm on your bed," Potter said to Valjean, his tone utterly practical. Snape was about to retort that Potter could just as easily replicate the bed as they had done with the dining chairs, but he was distracted by Valjean and Javert studying one another, then nodding.

It did not take long to shrink the table out of the way and create a pair of camp beds in the outer room, nor to double the size of Valjean's bed so that it filled his chamber nearly from one side to the other. The last thing Valjean said before retiring was, "I wonder whether you might teach me that spell for cleaning the chamberpots."

Lying in the dark with Potter in the bed opposite, Snape whispered, "Do you have a practical reason for playing matchmaker for those two, or do you merely enjoy meddling?"

"I'm a romantic." Snape could hear the grin in Potter's voice. "Besides, maybe that's what we're supposed to do -- get them together for some reason. Is it illegal, here? I mean, now?"

"I don't know. The French have been reputed to be more tolerant of such things than the English. I do know that the law has rarely prevented people from following such inclinations, even when they were punishable by death."

"You seem to know a lot about it." Potter's statement sounded more like a question. He added offhandedly, "I could put us in one bed instead of two, too."

"Go to sleep, or I'll think that the wine went to your head." Snape heard a muffled thump from behind the wall and tried not to think about what the two men in the room beyond might be doing. Turning over, he touched the small scars on his neck. _And I did not mean your mum_ , he wanted to add, but that would hardly have discouraged Potter from what the prat probably thought of as meaningless flirtation. 

Instead Snape closed his eyes, but sleep was slow in coming.


	5. Chapter 5

Snape had been awake for an hour, working on the Portkey that would take them to Beauxbatons, pointedly not looking at Potter -- still asleep spread out fetchingly on top of the covers -- when he heard a soft feminine gasp. He found himself looking up at Cosette, who appeared informal yet modest in a house dress. "Forgive me, sir, I did not realize --"

"It's all right," replied Snape wearily, glancing over at Potter, who had woken and was stretching to reach his glasses on the floor, his hair tousled in a sexy, which was to say unkempt, manner. "Your father felt that we should stay here rather than risk being seen outside."

"Where is my father?"

"He said something about returning to a larger house? The Rue --" Snape tried to think through the last memories of a dream about swimming after Potter in a rushing river which turned into tangled bedsheets. "The Rue Pomade?"

Cosette giggled, but she was already crossing to knock on the door nearest the bed where Snape had slept. "Papa? Are you still asleep?"

There was a thud, then whispering that Snape couldn't make out. "A moment!" Valjean called sharply. More noises followed.

Cosette shrugged, but Snape did not meet her eyes, imagining the two men in the bedroom frantically collecting the pieces of their clothes tossed one by one out of the bed they had shared. "I will ask Toussaint about breakfast," she said as if it were not outrageous for her to wake and find two men asleep on Transfigured beds in her home.

Sitting up in bed, Potter grinned at Snape. "Do you think they --" He glanced toward the closed door.

Snape was about to reply that if they had, then the purpose of his and Potter's presence here was still murky, when the door to Valjean's bedroom opened. Whatever had transpired between the two men seemed to have left them both a bit dazed. Valjean appeared in the doorway, Javert just behind him, both dressed, though even from here Snape could see that not every button on Javert's uniform matched up to its proper buttonhole.

Valjean didn't seem to be able to stop smiling, and Javert blushed whenever he looked at Valjean, which was often. Even Cosette noticed. "Are you all right, Papa?" she asked, looking uncertain as he gave her shoulder a pat.

"I have never felt better," Valjean assured her, closing the bedroom door firmly. Javert blushed. Again.

Potter caught Snape's eye. Muttering a quiet charm so that they could speak in English, Snape said, "Obviously something further is required of us."

In the same hushed tone, Potter replied, "Bet we're on the right track, though. They wouldn't have been in the same room last night if it hadn't been for us."

" _Toussaint est allée au marché à l'aube_ ," Cosette told her father, still looking a bit worried.

" _Bien, bien_ ," Valjean agreed absently, " _Très bien._ " He offered her his arm as they strode into the kitchen.

"Are _you_ all right?" Snape asked Javert, lifting the charm so that he could be understood without having to try to speak French.

Javert sat down heavily on Potter's bed. "I am damned," he said, letting his face sink into his hands. Potter scrambled over beside the distraught man.

"It couldn't have been that bad," Potter said, looking like he couldn't decide between a comforting pat and a manly slap.

"It was Paradise on earth," Javert said between his fingers. When he looked up, his expression was bleak. "I have corrupted an incorruptible man."

Potter gave him a look that said clearly that it was Snape's turn, though Snape knew himself to be no better at this sort of thing -- whatever this sort of thing was -- than Potter. "I have been here for barely a day and even I could see that your friend was perfectly willing to be 'corrupted,'" he observed.

"You don't understand," began Javert, sitting up straighter. "Valjean is kind, and pious..."

Not wanting to be subjected to another lecture about the virtues of Jean Valjean, Snape interrupted him. "Surely you didn't force him."

Javert looked startled. "It was he who said that perhaps I might embrace him as a brother to show that we were no longer enemies." He blushed again.

"Then what happened?" Potter asked, and though Snape knew the answer had no bearing on their mission, whatever it might be, he didn't chide Potter.

"It was my fault. I kissed him. But a man as powerful as Valjean would not be satisfied by mere kisses, not when the flesh stirs," Javert said in the tone of a confession. "And though I knew no more about how to proceed than he --"

"You...oh," Potter said, and now he and Javert were both blushing. Snape prided himself that he controlled his own reaction. Javert was looking at his hands, but Potter was looking at Snape. "Um, what are you working on, Professor?" he asked too brightly, glancing at the candlestick from which Snape was creating a Portkey.

"I am preparing to take us all to Beauxbatons. Since the one thing we know for certain is that Miss Fauchelevent has a future there, it seemed a reasonable course of action." Javert, at least, had left off staring morosely downward and was now paying attention. "Did you learn anything about the boy? Pontmercy?"

"If you mean did I learn whether he can do magic, no, but his grandfather was muttering about Marius's father, the Colonel. I wonder whether the Colonel was a wizard in addition to being a Bonapartist."

"He was a botanist," supplied Cosette, who had come back into the room with her father. "I know little more about him."

Valjean exchanged a glance with Javert. "You are certain that visiting with other wizards would be safe?" asked Valjean.

"It would certainly be against the law," added Javert. "And, I expect, condemned by the Church."

"The law is wrong about us." That was Valjean, quite forcefully. "The Church as well. God made us as we are." He gestured to the unfinished Portkey that Snape was holding. "I have a pair of silver candlesticks in my bedroom, given to me by the Bishop of Digne, who told me that I must become an honest man. But I found that it was not possible for me to live honestly without choosing sometimes to break either the laws of God or the laws of man. I have tried always to choose what I believed God would have me do."

"You never told me that." While Cosette spoke, Valjean's head swerved toward her as though he had forgotten momentarily that she was listening. "You told me that truth was given by God to us all in our turn. I want to know the rest."

"But not now," said Snape, unable to bear the thought of several more hours listening to Valjean and Javert describe the miseries of their past lives. He set down the candlestick that was now a Portkey. "When I perform the last spell, this object will take us all to the South of France in no more time than it would take me to walk to the kitchen. In my own time, it is illegal to create such an object without the permission of the Ministry of Magic. But Potter and I are both experts at bending the rules for the greater good, and since we are the wizards who have been sent to you, I can only assume that our usual methods will suffice."

Then he yelped, for Potter had jumped up and kissed his cheek. "I didn't know you thought I was an expert at anything," he grinned.

Giggling, Cosette covered her mouth. "I shall help Toussaint bring breakfast," she said, disappearing into the kitchen. 

Valjean, too, was struggling to hide a smile. "My manners are appalling. You are my guests, yet here I stand lecturing." He followed Cosette out of the room.

Dragging an astonished Javert to his feet, Snape muttered to Potter, "Why don't you do something useful like turning these beds back into chairs. Don't touch the Portkey."

Javert was still gaping at him. "You let him kiss you. Even though he is so young!"

"And your friend is older than any of us. Your point?" Javert tilted his head, conceding the point. "As to our previous discussion, you heard what Valjean said. 'God made us as we are.' I think you need not fear corrupting him. If you accept that he can be a pious man and also a wizard, surely you can accept that he can be a pious man and also --"

"-- as queer as we are," Potter finished for him. It was Snape's turn to stare while Potter finished recreating the dining table and chairs they had used the evening before. "What's the matter? You didn't believe that I was actually gay?" Before Snape had sufficiently recovered to reply, Potter added, "There is one thing that worries me, though. The Palace of Beauxbatons is Unplottable, right? How are we going to find it?"

"I have been there before, for a Potions conference." At least Snape could still surprise Potter. "But if it proves impossible to find, then we shall all have a holiday in the Côte d'Azur."

"How romantic. I wish Marius could go with us," sighed Cosette, who had returned carrying teacups. "Don't you think I should remain here to visit him again?"

Grinning, Potter made the cups float out of her hands and over to the table. "He'll be fine for one day. I'm sure he's sleeping. I have a feeling you and Marius are going to spend a lot of time in the French Riviera in the future."

Breakfast was a noisy affair, with Potter telling Cosette about the students from Beauxbatons he had met when they visited Hogwarts while Snape explained to Valjean how the academies of magic selected and taught students. Javert, however was very quiet. Finally, he admitted in a quiet voice to Snape, "I never expected to return to that part of France, so near to Toulon."

Valjean overheard him nonetheless. "We are different men now, Javert." They exchanged a look, then Valjean reached across the table and squeezed his hand. "Everything has changed."

"Did you know each other in Toulon?" asked Cosette, turning her head toward her father. "Why did you never tell me you came from there?"

"I did not come from there. I came from Faverolles." There was a sharp edge to Valjean's voice. "I met Javert in Toulon. But we shall discuss this some other time. Mr. Snape, what must we know to travel with you? When shall I tell Toussaint that we will return?"

"No later than tomorrow." They paused to remove the dishes and push the table from the center of the room so that Snape could set down the Portkey. "It's very simple. We must all take hold of the candlestick and hold on, and it will do the rest." He glanced at Javert. "I must warn you that it may leave you feeling ill, like the way we traveled yesterday to the cathedral." Javert scowled. "But as we have no time to teach you to ride broomsticks --"

"You know how to ride broomsticks?" Cosette interrupted eagerly. "Oh, I hope you will teach me!"

"One thing at a time," Snape said crossly, earning a grin from Potter. "Everyone stand in a circle, please, and when I say the word, grab the candlestick."

He was fairly certain that Valjean was clutching Javert's hand as the Portkey took them away.


	6. Chapter 6

Potter fell on top of him. Javert fell on top of Valjean. Snape suspected neither was entirely the result of the Portkey. Only Cosette looked unruffled, if a bit queasy, stepping forward as though she had just alighted from a carriage onto the narrow lane in which they'd landed.

"I hate Portkeys," mumbled Potter, his voice somewhere in the folds of Snape's robes. Snape noticed he wasn't overly eager to extricate himself. Valjean, too, made a sound, but it didn't translate into either of the two languages Snape currently understood.

Cosette was not looking at the tangle of masculine arms and legs. She was looking up. Snape followed her gaze and knew his Portkey had fulfilled its job properly.

"It is the castle on a cloud," she exclaimed. Even Valjean and Javert stopped pretending to extricate themselves and looked in the direction she was staring. Beauxbatons was not perched on a crag as Hogwarts was, nor was it as ancient and medieval as Hogwarts. Instead its spires and turrets owed more to the builders of some fabulous chateau. It seemed to float atop billowy clouds, the base never quite visible. There was one tall spire, slightly off center, and a cascading flurry of towers and buttresses beneath, most topped with blue shingles a bit darker than the sky. The stones themselves were creamy white, though Snape had heard rumors that the French relied heavily on fairies to keep the lot polished and sparkling.

"Magnificent," Valjean said, extending a hand to Javert as they both got to their feet.

"If you like that sort of thing," Potter said, brushing himself off. Snape and Potter exchanged a glance that mirrored their allegiance to their own castle.

"It looks familiar, somehow," said Javert, standing shoulder to shoulder with Valjean.

"You may have seen it in a dream, like Cosette. Muggles can't see it. It's protected with spells and defenses," he explained. "I don't know who the headmaster is now, but he should be able to tell us how and where to procure a wand for you -- for all of you."

"And broomsticks?" Cosette asked, clapping her hands together in delight.

Javert alone looked troubled. "It is too late for me to learn," he said, casting a glance at Valjean, as he explained further, "Not my age, but my --" He made a helpless gesture at himself. "My temperament."

Snape thought he could probably change the man's mind if had five minutes alone with him and a list of all the magical sexual aids, but that would hardly be proper under the circumstances. He expected Potter to jump in with some sympathetic nonsense, but it was Valjean who spoke.

"Perhaps you are right, my friend. We are old dogs, are we not?" He was trying to look brave, but only succeeding with Javert, who looked like he would jump into a river if one were handy.

"No, no," Javert said, grabbing Valjean's arm. "It is only that I have believed all my life --"

"That a man cannot change?" said Valjean and for a moment the two men simply stared at one another. Snape was about to start inquiring as to whether there was an inn in the vicinity where they could drop the pair of them when Javert spoke.

"I suppose I could try, at least," he said, and Snape had the feeling he would have jumped onto a dragon's back if Valjean had asked him to.

Feeling it unwise to bring three novices and The Chosen One into Beauxbatons of the 1830s, Snape left Potter and the others in the extensive gardens when he approached the gate. It was simple enough to convince the caretaker that he was a visiting professor from Hogwarts of that era who had had his wand stolen by Muggle ruffians near... Thinking quickly, and recalling what Javert had said, Snape had muttered, "-- near Toulon," and the caretaker had nodded understanding. 

Snape could not for the life of him remember who had been Headmaster of Hogwarts in 1832, something one of paintings in his former office would surely have shouted at him about, but he took a chance and dropped the name of Artemisia Lufkin, the first witch to become Minister for Magic, who had died not long before. By the time he left the glittering palace, he had a few coins and directions to the Rue Torsade, the equivalent of Diagon Alley in nearby Marseille.

He returned to the garden to find the others in a state of great excitement. "There was a coach pulled by horses with wings that flew into the air!" Cosette exclaimed. "Have you ridden in such a coach?"

"The carriages at Hogwarts are somewhat different," explained Snape, not wanting to have to describe Thestrals. He glanced at Javert, who looked dumbfounded, and at Valjean, who looked awed. "I have borrowed some money. We shall go to Marseille."

Javert frowned. "We will need to pass by Toulon to reach Marseille."

"Marseille is close enough to Apparate." Nice was closer, and in the opposite direction from Toulon, but Snape wasn't certain whether at this moment in history Nice was part of France or Sardinia, nor whether magic was legal there. "The caretaker of Beauxbatons advised me to go to Marseille. We will not need to enter Toulon..."

"Wait," Potter interrupted him, holding up a hand. "The flood -- you know -- the big one, later, near Beauxbatons." Tilting his head, he screwed up his face as if he were trying to remember, but his eyes darted toward Cosette. "If Toulon is on the sea, would it cause problems there, too?"

"The only thing I know about Toulon is that it used to have a naval base and a prison," said Snape irritably, not wishing to be distracted from the plan to visit Marseille. He had obtained the name of a café in the Rue Torsade from the caretaker and was looking forward to a strong cup of coffee. But his words made the others gasp.

Cosette looked from her father, who was gazing with longing at the palace as if he wished he could disappear inside, to Javert, who was staring at the ground as if perhaps it would swallow him up. "You said you met in Toulon?" she prompted, and, when neither man replied, added, "Did you meet in the prison?"

Valjean looked at Snape as if he hoped Snape would have a helpful answer. Snape did not. Closing his eyes as if to brace himself for great suffering, Valjean whispered, "Yes."

"Is that why you would never tell me where you came from? Papa, I'm not a child. I know what happens to people who are so cold or hungry that they break the law. You think I don't remember where I had to live before you rescued me, but I do -- I remember how Mrs. Thénardier would tell me she would send me to prison if anyone saw me using magic to do my chores, even though I couldn't have finished them without magic. I would not think you were an evil man if you had been in prison -- neither of you," she added, glancing at Javert.

"Inspector Javert was not a prisoner. He was a guard." Though Javert was gazing at Valjean as if he wished it had not been so, Valjean's expression remained bleak. Potter looked like he wanted to say something, so Snape grabbed his hand and squeezed it to distract him. Instead of speaking, Potter laced his fingers between Snape's, listening to Valjean. "It is not only what you think of me that matters. To be accepted in society, and by that boy and his grandfather --"

"Marius knows what I am," interrupted Cosette. All four men made small noises of surprise. "Well, not what I am -- I did not know there was a word for it that was not vulgar and vile. But he knows what I can do. How could I give my heart to a man who does not see the same wonder in the world that I do?"

Snape couldn't tell whether Valjean looked more relieved or more petrified. He was about to say that perhaps it was time to set aside these reflections and discover whether French cafés served firewhisky when Potter made an impatient noise and muttered a spell so he could speak to Snape in English. "My point was, what if it wasn't only Beauxbatons that needed saving? If there are wizards in prison in Toulon, and a huge flood coming along the Mediterranean coast, someone might need to do something to protect the prisoners. Someone who knew the prison, like a guard or a former prisoner, maybe both."

"Potter, sometimes I could kiss you," Snape said, feeling both the rightness of Potter's conclusions and irritation that it should have been Potter to conclude them.

"Not on the first date," Potter said quietly, even though they were still speaking English. He squeezed Snape's fingers.

"This is not a date, it's a --" Snape sputtered before realizing that Potter was teasing.

"Extraordinary mission with consequences reverberating through time, yeah, I got that," Potter replied before he performed the translation spell on them again.

Cosette had taken Valjean by the shoulders and was kissing each cheek. "You must trust me, Papa. I am not going to hide any more and I won't let those I love be parted from me. If anyone seeks to denounce you, I will --" Even Snape thought she looked very fetching as she frowned in determination. "Surely there is some magic to make someone forget they have seen something?"

Both he and Potter nodded. "There is. _Obliviate_ , the memory charm. A very useful spell when spotted by Muggles."

"There, you see, we will learn magic together." Her imperious gaze swept Javert as well, who didn't even dare shake his head.

The Rue Torsade was in the Old Port section of Marseille, fronted by a bakery called _Confiseries Magiques_ , so that the scent of vanilla and cinnamon overhung the magical street behind it. The translation spell ensured that they could read the French signs. Both Javert and Valjean stopped and stared at the throngs of people buying everything from flying carpets to vanishing potions to household fairies, which the French employed more than house-elves.

"All of these people are --" Valjean began, grabbing Javert's sleeve as a cart laden with cages of fluttering Cornish pixies lumbered past them.

“Witches and wizards," Potter said, grinning at Snape. "Our kind."

They had to practically drag Cosette away from the broomsticks piled in front of one shop, and even Javert looked interested when they passed the bookshop, its windows displaying every sort of magical book.

They spent a large part of the afternoon in the wand shop. As the shopkeeper, Monsieur Bois, explained, adult wizards in need of wands were not uncommon, for the wizarding community in France was only beginning to rebuild after the chaos of the Terror and the laws that had driven them underground for so many years. Cosette was able to make sparks fly from every wand she tried, bright rainbows and glittering fireworks displays, but when she took hold of a wand made from rosewood, a curtain of silver light fell from the line she traced in the air with it. That wand, they were told, had an unusual core of black jet derived from ancient, decayed magical trees, which appeared to delight Valjean for reasons Snape could not guess.

The search for a wand for Javert took up the bulk of their time. He was reluctant to touch any wand at all, having had it impressed upon him for most of his life that wands were both unlawful and dangerous, and it seemed almost as if the wands sensed his distrust. The first one he allowed Monsieur Bois to place in his hand shot directly out of it, ricocheting off the walls like a trapped insect before crashing behind a bookcase. The tip of the second wand lit up like a Muggle cigarette lighter.

The third wand caused an enormous wooden case to detach itself from a wall. Valjean dashed over and caught it before any of the trained wizards had time to cast a spell to keep it from falling, giving them a display of his astonishing strength. It seemed that Javert, who was practically drooling, had not been exaggerating after all. Glancing over, Snape noticed that even Potter looked impressed, which made him scowl. Pulling out his own new wand -- walnut, fifteen inches, rigid, with a phoenix feather core -- he lifted the case from Valjean's bulging arms and returned it to its place mounted on the wall.

Apparently arousal enhanced Javert's sarcasm if not his magical control, for he began to make remarks about the size and shape of the various wands that sputtered, sparked, and blasted furniture as he attempted to master them. There was quite a stack of discarded boxes on the counter by the time Monsieur Bois dug into a dusty shelf and pulled out an ebony wand. By then Javert was looking more forlorn than ever and Valjean looked as though he would surrender his newly-acquired slender willow wand with unicorn hair core if Javert continued to be unsuccessful. Once the ebony wand went into Javert's fingers, however, a glowing light that resembled the earliest stage of a Patronus charm emerged from it, and Cosette gave a girlish squeal of delight.

"Have you ever studied protection spells?" Snape asked him.

"Of course not." The light faded slowly as Javert lowered his arm. He no longer looked miserable, though he still twitched nervously when Valjean touched his shoulder.

"A most unusual wand," Monsieur Bois said, patting his fingertips together. "Very unusual core. I collected it myself from a piece of the famed Crystal Ball of Amiens. It was said that whoever gazed into it would see the way to find the one thing he desired most.” He tutted. "Sadly destroyed during the Terror, but I saved a bit of it, just enough for this wand, and crushed the crystal to powder for the core." He beamed at the newly wanded customers.


	7. Chapter 7

Having worried that the coins given to him as a courtesy by the caretaker of Beauxbatons Palace would not be sufficient to purchase four wands, Snape was relieved to discover that Monsieur Bois was happy to accept Muggle money and surprised to learn that Valjean had a great deal of it, insisting on paying for Snape's wand as well as Javert's. Once that transaction had been completed, Snape inquired about a café and was directed to _Le Chaudron de Chant_ , where he gratefully sipped coffee while Potter taught Cosette to play Gobstones with the set at their table. Javert paid little attention, since a pair of witches at the table beside them were practicing knitting without touching the needles.

"That should not be necessary," he said to Snape.

"Perhaps not, but it is quicker than doing it by hand and they don't have to worry about poking themselves with the needles. It isn't as if they're harming anyone." Glancing around, the café, Snape wondered yet again why he and Potter were there and whether they would know when their task had been completed or simply vanish from wherever they stood without so much as a farewell. "I believe that we should remain in Marseille this evening. I'm not quite certain why Potter and I have been sent into your era, but there are some basic spells that it would be useful for you to learn."

Because Cosette had never seen the sea and Potter had never visited the Mediterranean, they decided to practice spells on an isolated beach, though Javert was none too keen to Apparate again to reach the shore, and even so far from any other people, he was reluctant to use magic. Yet apparently Javert had found the right wand, for his initial efforts at transfiguring pebbles into crabs were more successful than either Cosette's or Valjean's -- whom they were now all calling Jean, for Cosette's sake as much as from any risk of being overheard by someone who might recognize the name -- and it took him only two tries to master the stinging hex. 

"You don't believe that this power comes from the devil?" Javert asked Valjean, who had difficulty with subtle magic like levitation charms yet could blast enormous rocks fifteen feet in the air without uttering a spell.

"When I first met Cosette, I saw her make a bucket of water that weighed as much as she did float above the ground. She was a child -- an innocent. I knew that witchcraft in her could not come from evil or possession by the devil." Valjean glanced at Snape. "Could you teach us to become invisible or to transform ourselves into animals so that we might hide ourselves if we are caught?" 

"Invisibility is very advanced magic, and few wizards are able to master the Animagus transformation even after years of study," Snape told him. "It is, of course, important not to use magic indiscriminately or in view of Muggles, but I believe your days of hiding from the police are over." He glanced at Javert, who had forgotten himself and was smiling as he successfully levitated a coin off the ground. "I don't know how much you've overheard myself and Potter, but we believe that we must have been sent to you for a specific purpose. Meddling with time is extremely dangerous, and wizards only undertake it when the need is great."

"You both recognized Cosette's name," recalled Valjean, his tone uneasy. "You said she was celebrated in your own time. Have you come back here to protect her from some disaster?"

"I don't think so. From what I know, your daughter has a bright future ahead of her as a powerful witch and the ancestor of witches and wizards in my own era." Valjean looked pleased about that, though also sad, as if the discovery that Cosette would develop her powers and become a mother might inevitably mean his separation from her. It reminded Snape of what he had believed to be the last thought of his own life before he found himself on the Pont au Change. "Potter and I were sent here just after a disaster in our own era. The first person I saw when I arrived was Javert. I believe that whatever reason we've been sent here must have to do with him." 

Here Snape hesitated. He had never understood the laws governing time, whether one had to watch what one said in the past or whether whatever one said was already a part of the past as one remembered it. He saw Valjean glance in the direction of the policeman, his expression softening as Javert made the floating coin fly in a circle without touching the ground. It brought Snape to a decision about telling Valjean what he knew. 

"Obviously it is necessary that Javert remain alive, which must be why I arrived when I did. Potter thinks that there must be a reason that he did not arrive at the same moment I did, but later that same day, after I had met you. We know from our history that Cosette will be in this part of France in several years' time, to do the thing for which she is remembered in our time. We have been speculating that perhaps you and Javert are meant to be here as well."

Valjean looked out at the shining blue water of the Mediterranean Sea. The hand he raised to his eyes to shade them from the brilliance made a shadow fall over his face, yet Snape could see the longing in those eyes as Valjean glanced at Javert. Still, when he spoke, Valjean's voice was somber. "The only thing Javert and I share in this part of the world is Toulon." He shuddered. "I have spent most of my life hiding from Javert, trying to escape him, always fearing that he would guess my whereabouts or find out my cover. I had believed it to be his vigilance that kept putting me in his path, but you make me wonder whether some other force might have been at work." 

He glanced at Snape as if hoping to be told that he was wrong, but Snape found himself nodding. "There must be a reason that a former prisoner and a former guard of Toulon, both wizards, are so important that I was pulled away from my own demise to find you and make certain that you found one another."

"You and the boy," Valjean added, nodding at Potter. "What did you call him? The Chosen One. That sounds like a title of great importance." He smiled a bit at Snape. "And I think you care for him much more than you wish to let him see."

Snape wanted to retort that that wasn't true and in any case wasn't any of Valjean's business, but he could not afford to alienate either this man or his prickly _bon ami_. "Perhaps we were sent to you for that reason as well, since I might say the same about you two," he muttered, gesturing toward Javert, for whom Potter was demonstrating the Patronus Charm, making a gleaming stag cavort along the shoreline. Just then there was a bang followed by a shriek. Whatever Cosette had been trying to transfigure, it had exploded in a shower of sparks. "And perhaps we should leave off practicing magic and find an inn before we attract someone's attention," he added as Valjean jumped to his feet, alarmed.

Though Valjean probably could have paid for the finest lodgings in Marseille, he seemed to be accustomed to drawing as little attention to himself as possible, which is how their group found itself at a respectable-looking but rather small inn near the Rue Torsade where they dined on what Snape had to admit was some of the best fish he had ever eaten. Though used to serving wizards, the proprietor looked suspicious upon discovering that Snape and Potter were English, causing Potter to invent the story that he was Snape's son and they were traveling with these French cousins to the region from which their ancestors had come. They were all cheerfully pretending to be related to one another when they learned that there were only three rooms available. 

It was apparent that Cosette should have one room -- the largest, Valjean insisted over her objections, with the finest furniture and a view of the water. It was probably the inn's equivalent of a honeymoon suite, thought Snape. Since he and Potter were now pretending to be father and son, Valjean had added with a small smile, it seemed obvious that they should share one of the other rooms, while Valjean and a blushing Javert took the third. Snape hoped the beds were not against an adjoining wall, since he expected that Valjean and Javert would not spend much time sleeping and there was only one sort of levitation the pair were likely to practice.

He was unprepared for the discovery that the room he and Potter were to share contained only one bed.

"Well, that's convenient," said Potter with a laugh, flopping onto the mattress on his back and wriggling in what Snape could only describe as an inviting manner.

"How on earth is it convenient? We'll have to use a spell to separate the --"

"What for? I don't want separate beds." Potter raised himself up on his elbows, looking at Snape. He grinned wickedly. "Daddy."

"There is absolutely nothing amusing about that, Potter." Much to Snape's alarm, Potter's lewd smiles and suggestive words were going straight to his groin. If this kept up he was going to need an _Erectum Deflatio_ spell.

To Snape's horror, Potter looked as if he knew it. "Amusing isn't what I was going for, anyway. Arousing, maybe?"

"From pretending to be your father? Hardly. For one thing, as you know, I despised your father. For another..."

"Right, got it, you think I'm just as arrogant as my dad was, and you only saved my life because you had a thing for my mum. I did see your memories." Potter's expression had suddenly turned serious.

"Not only because of your mother. She was my oldest friend -- nothing more." Snape hadn't meant to explain so much, though he supposed it didn't matter, since it was unlikely to affect whatever they had been sent to 19th century France to do. "You are, after all, the Chosen One. And apparently necessary to set things right in this era as well as our own."

Still looking somber, Potter sat up. "Not just me. Both of us." He shifted to one side, making room for Snape to sit on the bed if Snape chose to do so. "Can I ask you something? I keep trying to figure out what I'm doing here. I understand why it had to be me against You-Know-Who because of the prophecy and the curse he used on me. But anyone could teach Cosette protection charms, she's a natural at them, and Javert thinks I'm too young to be trustworthy. It would make more sense if whoever sent you had sent Fleur, since she's descended from the Pontmercys, or even Malfoy -- I'm pretty sure he has French relatives."

"I'm not certain what your question is," prompted Snape.

Potter took a breath. "Do you think we're here because we're dead in our own time?"

Snape had been trying not to ask himself that very question. The seconds before he had found himself on the bridge in Paris, he had been certain that he was dying. His fingers went to his throat to touch the small scars apparently created by snake fangs, though he dropped his hand when he saw Potter watching him. "Obviously I have no way of knowing what had happened to you at the precise moment you were brought here. It's possible that we were each pulled away at the moment of..." He sighed, sitting beside Potter on the bed. "Of death."

"So this might be the start of our afterlife, if we get an afterlife. Or it just might be a spell someone set up to make sure things don't go balls up here the way they did at Hogwarts." Slowly Potter nodded. "Look, I know I'm probably not your first choice of a person to be with. But since this might be my only chance..."

One moment Snape was waiting to hear the rest of whatever Potter intended to say. The next moment, Potter was kissing him.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Skip this chapter if you're only here for Valjean/Javert and Snape/Potter offends you.

Despite his skills as an Occlumens, Snape had never been very good at hiding his feelings. It hadn't mattered much with the Dark Lord, who didn't care if Snape harbored no affection for him as long as Snape admired his power and feared his wrath, two things Snape had never had to feign. But it had always been a problem with Harry -- not Harry, bloody hell, he meant _Potter_ \-- who had learned to manipulate Snape by playing on his emotions.

Thus, Snape's first reaction was to scowl and pull away, even though his heart was hammering and the kiss had done nothing to _Deflatio_ his _Erectum_. "What are you doing?" he demanded.

"Isn't it obvious?" Damn it, Potter was kissing him again, and Snape, it seemed, was kissing back -- at least, he had no other explanation for how his hand had become tangled in Harry's, no, _Potter_ 's hair and his other arm wrapped around Potter's waist. "I've wanted to do this for a long time."

"You are a liar. You wanted to kill me. You held me responsible for..."

"I think I always knew better, but I needed to be angry at someone and it made the most sense to blame you. I know you would have saved Dumbledore if you could have, and Sirius, and even my dad." Once again, Potter kissed him, and once again, Snape was not quick enough to evade him, mostly because Potter was half in his lap and Snape's prick very much wanted to feel the rest of him there. "So we should let bygones be bygones, especially if we're dead."

It was impossible to think about being dead when Snape felt more alive than he had in years. "I'm still your professor," he muttered.

"I haven't been at Hogwarts all year, and even if I had, we're not in school any more." Potter was grinning as he tugged off the cravat that Valjean had loaned Snape. "Are those your only objections -- you think I want to kill you and you shouldn't shag a student? Because if that's it, not you're not gay or you aren't interested in me..." With a wriggle, Potter seated himself fully over Snape's lap, pressing down on the erection that Snape could no longer hide. "...since it feels like you are, I think the might-be-dead thing negates any other problems."

"Oh." Suddenly things became clear to Snape. "You believe that I am your only remaining opportunity. I suppose it must have been a joke among your friends, 'Would you have sex with Professor Snape if he was the last person on Earth? What about Professor Umbridge?' In my day, Slughorn was the final choice of the desperate."

"What?" Potter made a face. "I wouldn't have sex with Umbridge if she was the _only_ person on Earth. And it's not desperation -- I bet I could find some other wizard willing to experiment. I never wanted to do it with a stranger, though. I wanted to do it with you." There were a pair of muffled thumps from the other side of the wall, followed by a pause, then a scraping sound that Snape guessed was probably Valjean tugging the heavy bed someplace it couldn't bump into anything else. He was certain Javert must have enjoyed watching that. As if following his train of thought, Potter grinned. "Now, Professor, if you're finished making excuses..."

Potter's tongue swiped across Snape's lower lip, and Snape decided that he was, indeed, finished making excuses. If whatever power had sent them to France didn't want them snogging, that power should have seen fit to provide separate bedrooms. Moreover, since Potter was likely right and Snape, at least, was likely going to return to his own time just in time to die, it seemed ungrateful not to accept this opportunity that had been dropped in his lap. "Experiment?" he inquired.

"Um." Potter's face warmed against Snape's own. "I've never done anything with a man. You know I learn fast, though. And you won't have to lose any sleep over whether you've corrupted an incorruptible man."

"No, you have always been a wicked boy," retorted Snape between kisses. "And possibly delusional. I'm not young. I'm not handsome. I have scars from --"

"I don't care. It's not like I'm in Quidditch championship shape these days either." With the cravat removed, Potter had gone to work on Snape's shirt, while Snape felt Potter's too-thin torso shift under his own hands. All those months of hiding, without proper food or exercise, had taken a toll, though having seen Potter with his shirt off the evening before, Snape was aware that the young man still looked quite attractive. "Anyway, I know you have a big cock because I used to try to make out the shape of it under your trousers. I'd like to see it." Snape's cock throbbed enthusiastically in response to this suggestion. No one had seen it, nor indeed had expressed any interest in seeing it, in longer than he would have admitted to Potter. "From what I can tell from the Quidditch locker rooms, mine's completely average, so I hope you won't be disappointed."

"It will be a relief to discover something about you that isn't extraordinary," muttered Snape, pulling Potter's shirt over his head so he couldn't see his face. From behind the fabric, he heard Potter giggle. "I have two requests. Don't bring up your parents, and don't call me 'Professor' again."

"Should I call you 'sir'?" Potter's grinning face came into view as the shirt slid off. "I'll do anything you want, sir. I'll suck your --"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Potter," Snape interrupted, not meaning to sound like a stern professor but afraid of coming in his pants if he didn't shut Potter up. He reached to unfasten Potter's trousers, feeling a bulge that suggested Snape would not be at all disappointed by Potter's cock.

"If I'm not calling you Professor, then I'd think the least you could do is call me Harry," Potter said with feigned indignation. "Severus."

Though he rolled his eyes, Snape did not object to the use of his first name. It wasn't as if he expected Potter to flutter his eyelashes and murmur it in the Great Hall at Hogwarts, or anywhere else, for that matter, since he was probably dead. For the first time, he felt a pang of real regret. He still hadn't said any of the things to Potter that he had once imagined he might, if they had ever found themselves in a place where it wasn't ridiculous even to contemplate it. "Harry," he began, the name feeling strange in his mouth when he rarely dared to permit himself to say it in his thoughts. "You aren't going to regret this if you discover that you are not, after all, dead in our own time?"

"What I'd regret is knowing that we had this opportunity and wasted it." Potter's brow furrowed, changing the shape of the famous lightning-bolt scar. "Are you going to regret it?"

"Not for a minute," Snape said honestly before urging Potter to his feet, tugging Potter's trousers down. "Didn't you learn anything from my memories?" There was nothing at all disappointing about Potter naked, particularly not when Potter was looking at him with an eager, anxious expression. If Snape had to be dead, this was not a terrible way to go out, far better than he had expected. Leaning back, he kicked off his shoes and let Potter pull his trousers off, wondering whether it might be possible that Potter had been wrong about everything and _this_ was why they'd been sent through time and space.

The bed thudded against the wall as Potter flopped beside him, holding both his own wand and the one Snape had acquired that afternoon. Already Snape was thinking of it as his own. He had felt a certain aversion to his previous wand since he had been obligated to use it to perform the mercy killing Dumbledore had demanded of him, and the Dark Lord's deadly wand fetish was enough to make anyone long for a change, even if Voldemort had been so afraid of Snape in the end that he had sent the snake to kill him rather than risking a duel. Taking the walnut wand from Potter, he cast a Silencing charm on the room. "We should teach the other two to do that," said Harry, grinning.

"Tomorrow." Snape wondered briefly whether they would still be there tomorrow -- perhaps they would be whisked back to their own time in their sleep, where he would never wake again. He had no intention of wasting time on regrets. "Now, what precisely did you have in mind?"

"Everything," Harry -- that was, Potter -- that was, Harry -- replied at once. "Or anything," he clarified just as Snape opened his mouth to ask him to narrow that down. "Anything that two naked men can do to make each other feel good." He did something with his mouth on one of Snape's nipples that was tantalizingly close to making Snape feel too good to last under a determined assault.

"'Everything' would take until our own time to complete," Snape replied, though his voice was rasping with the pleasures of Harry's tongue. "Whether or not we are dead when we arrive in it."

"I don't feel dead," said Harry, switching his mouth to the other side of Snape's chest. "I've felt alive ever since I arrived here." He tilted his face up and nuzzled the underside of Snape's chin. "And ever since I thought you might let me get naked with you."

Snape, his own blood heating up, could not dispute his own lack of dead-ness. "Very well, if you have spent time imagining such activities --" Snape thought it prudent not to mention his own wayward thoughts where Harry was concerned -- "tell me what you've imagined."

"Riding your cock," Harry said, around a mouthful of nipple. "Or wrapping my legs around you while you're inside me. Sucking you under a desk -- that's one of my favorites though I suppose we don't have a desk handy." He appeared to be able to go on until truly "everything" had been suggested, but Snape's cock, while rapt at the promising list, would not have lasted until the end of it, not with Harry's attentions to other parts of his body.

"You have a very vivid imagination," Snape replied, sliding his fingers into the hair at the back of Harry's neck.

"I've had a lot of time to think about it, probably longer than you'd believe." Emphasizing his point with a flick of his tongue, he said, "Though I did more than just think." He prodded his erection against Snape's thigh in case there was any doubt the direction his practical experience had gone. Snape gave a groan and turned toward him until they were a tangle of legs -- Harry's were quite fit despite his recent lack of Quidditch training -- and arms that clasped and untangled and squeezed again.

Just so Harry wouldn't get the idea that Snape intended to remain passive, he kissed down Harry's neck, feeling the pulse speed up under his tongue. Harry's groan was quite as gratifying as his list-making and Snape wrung several of them from him, glad he'd thought to cast the Silencing spell beforehand. Harry moved restlessly against him, sliding his fingers into Snape's when his hand danced over Harry's belly.

"Yes, please, anything." His eyes fluttered open. "There isn't anything I don't want with you, if you'll give it to me."

"Harry," Snape groaned, though he was sure he had meant to say something else, and not press the word into Harry's skin. He guided Harry's hand, tugging him up as Harry picked up at once what he desired. Flinging one leg over Snape's hips, he righted himself and hugged his knees to Snape's sides, straddling him like a broom. Their cocks brushed as Snape slid his hands along Harry's thighs.

"Whatever else happens, I won't regret this," Harry said, "I couldn't, not with you."

"Even if I don't --" Snape simply couldn't imagine death, not with Harry so alive undulating against him.

Leaning over, Harry put a hand over Snape's lips. "All of this can't be for nothing." He bent further and slid his hand away and kissed him.

Despite what Harry had assured him, Snape did have the vague feeling that he might be corrupting an incorruptible man, a man who was not much older than a boy. If nothing else, he thought, this should be educational for Harry. "Did they teach you anything practical in those wizard life science classes, or did you pick up any valuable tips in the Quidditch locker rooms?" he asked, shifting back toward the pillows with Harry on top of him.

"You mean like always use a condom in case my partner's had sexual relations with Muggles? Have you?" asked Harry seriously.

"I have not had sexual relations with anyone in a very long time, much less with a Muggle," Snape retorted huffily, which made Harry smile. "I may have forgotten how."

"Well, I do know about lubrication charms." The suggestion in Harry's naughty wink went straight to Snape's cock. "And sex-specific uses of _Scourgify_ \--" Grabbing the wand, he aimed behind himself, screwed his face up in concentration, then grinned again, blushing. "There. Now I'm ready."

"I shall be the judge of that." It took concentration on Snape's part not to moan aloud when he touched Harry's cock, rising handsomely from a thatch of thick hair. If it was not quite as long as Snape's, it was nonetheless quite thick and leapt eagerly into his palm. Harry's enthusiastic groan made Snape eager to keep touching it. "How quickly will you recover if I make you come like this?"

"With you? Five minutes, tops." The breathless voice had a delightfully urgent sound. "After that it might take a couple of hours to do it again..."

"Potter, at my age it takes a couple of hours to do it more than once." He hadn't meant to sound so much like a professor, but Harry broke into a smile anyway. There was moisture spreading over the head of Harry's prick that Snape's mouth watered to taste. "If you would indulge me, then..."

When Snape's lips brushed across the tip, Harry let out a wail that would have woken everyone in the inn had they not used the Silencing charm. He took a moment to admire the restraint of the men in the next room, who must have been making uses of pillows or clothing to keep themselves quiet. He could not spare them thought for long, however, with Harry shuddering and clutching his shoulder, pushing an eager erection against Snape's mouth. "Oh fuck! I think you're the one indulging me."

"Such language," Snape smirked before lowering his mouth and sucking in earnest, his fingers stroking Harry's balls and behind them, determining that Harry could, in fact, perform the most intimate form of _Scourgify_. His neck had been in more comfortable positions, but he didn't expect this to take long. Harry was already groaning incoherently, bucking his hips to slide in and out of Snape's mouth, and when Snape flicked his tongue around the foreskin, pressing on the sensitive spot on the shaft with his lower lip, he felt Harry's fingers grip at his shoulder. 

"Going to --"

"Mmmhmm!" The vibrations were too much for Harry, who cried out and bucked, pushing into Snape's mouth and filling it with hot, bitter fluid. Snape swallowed this, letting his mouth tighten around Harry, who let out another breathless groan.

"Oh fuck, Severus!"

Snape decided right then that he would never object to Harry using his given name. He voiced no reply or approval, however, still having a rather delightful mouthful of cock. Only once it had begun to soften did he draw his mouth and hand back. He looked up at Harry, not bothering to hide the smirk he knew full well had settled on his lips.

"God, it won't even be five minutes if you look at me like that," Harry groaned.

"Like what?" replied Snape, giving the still succulent tip another flick of his tongue.

"Like you want to devour me whole," Harry ground out, already showing the promised signs of interest.

"I did just devour you," Snape pointed out, only to find himself the recipient of Harry's kiss, which did its own share of devouring. "You need to distract yourself," he said, though Harry was already pushing him back against the pillows.

"I can't think of a better way than this," said Harry, though his words were already muffled from being spoken around Snape's erection. Like everything else in Harry's young life, he threw himself into this pursuit without any forethought or hesitation and oh fuck, he wasn't bad at it, not at all.

Because he saw no reason not to, Snape pushed his fingers into the untidy hair, justifying to himself that if this were his last night of being alive, even alive only in the past, he was going to make memories that would brand a smile onto his corpse.

"Slow down, or I won't last." He groaned as Harry obediently slowed down, lifting his mouth away to rub his cheek against the damp shaft.

"Can I --" He dipped his face and began trailing wet kisses over the curve of Snape's balls.

Snape groaned again, eyes nearly rolling back in his head in pleasure. He only prevented this because if the Chosen One was going to kiss his balls, he wanted to witness it. His eyes got a bonus treat, for Harry had bent up one knee and was stroking his evidently quite-recovered cock. Free to watch and admire and feel every quiver of pleasure Harry was wringing from him, Snape stroked Harry's hair and felt his nerve endings blooming with pleasure, radiating from his prick all the way to the roots of his hair. There was no restraining it, even though he wanted more. Or everything.

"Harry!" he said, meaning to cry out a warning that he could pull away if he chose, but it came out as a moan and a shout of joy and the signal his cock had been waiting for to give him release. Only dimly did he see Harry's hand blurring on Harry's own prick, which spurted and coated his fingers. His eyes were still closed when Harry loosened his mouth and let Snape's prick slip free of it.

"We have to do that a lot more," Harry said as though they had endless reaches of time ahead of them. He licked his lips like a particularly satisfied kneazle.

"We may not have endless reaches of time ahead of us," Snape pointed out once he could focus his eyes again.

"We might," said Harry, who must have believed that post-coital intimacy was required because he drew close to Snape's side with every sign of intending to remain there until morning, or at least until the Silencing Charm wore off. "You don't know what we have ahead of us any more than I do."

Sleepily, Snape had to admit to himself that that was true. Being too tired to resist, he turned to let Harry snuggle close.


	9. Chapter 9

Snape woke because the bed was lurching. Harry was tugging on his trousers, leaning back to get them over his hips. "Going somewhere?" growled Snape.

Turning, Harry grinned at him. "I promised Cosette that I'd teach her to ride a broom and I figured it might be easier without her father watching and freaking out." Diving across the mattress, he planted a kiss on Snape's cheek. "Don't worry, I intend to do more of what we did last night again tonight."

"For all you know, tonight we'll be back in our own era and I shall be very much deceased." Frowning, Snape sat up and stretched. He had half-expected that, having brought Valjean and Javert to southern France, shown Beauxbatons to Cosette, and worked out whatever lingering issues of distrust remained between himself and Potter in a most satisfying manner, they would find themselves back where they started, with himself staring into Potter's eyes as his own vision faded.

Harry's fingers touched his neck, bringing Snape's thoughts back to the present. "I was looking at this," he said. "It's a scar from a snakebite, isn't it? You never had one of those before Nagini bit you. It looks like a pretty ordinary scar, though, not a mark from a Horcrux."

"What did you say?" Snape demanded sharply.

"A Horc-- oh, wait, you don't know. Or at least you don't know that I know, since I'm guessing you did know why You-Know-Who couldn't die." Shoving back his hair, Harry showed Snape the most famous scar in the world, the lightning bolt that marked the brow of the Chosen One. "I was the last Horcrux. It's why Dumbledore told you that I had to die so You-Know-Who could be defeated. Except You-Know-Who couldn't kill me because you were never the master of Dumbledore's wand. Draco's the one who disarmed him, then I disarmed Draco, so I was the wand's real master." Abruptly Harry scowled deeply. "Meaning you would have died for nothing, since killing you didn't give You-Know-Who enough power to kill me, cursed snake or no cursed snake."

"But it wasn't the curse that drained my life." Snape was frowning too. "I was bleeding to death. You saw. I had hoped that you cast no spell to try to heal me because you believed me to be beyond saving."

"I did think you were dying, but you told me the very first day of Potions class that there was something called the Draught of Living Death, and Professor Slughorn tried to teach us to make it, though no one but me got it right because I was the only one with your old textbook notes. So I know that death isn't always what it seems to be." Harry's fingers tilted up Snape's chin so that he could examine the scar, causing Snape to shiver, which made Harry smile. "Nothing about you feels dead. You haven't lost your temper and you definitely haven't lost your ability to feel things. I think you just lost enough blood not to remember exactly what happened before you got here."

Leaning in, Harry kissed the scar. The pressure of his mouth made Snape moan. Harry was right that nothing about him felt dead. In fact, his prick felt more alive than it had in years.

There was a muffled sound from the other side of the wall. "I had better go find Cosette before they wake up," said Harry with another grin. "But don't think we're finished here." He patted the bed before bounding off to the door, leaving Snape gaping foolishly after him.

With a sigh, Snape shifted and began to collect his clothes. He was too awake now to fall back asleep. Instead he dressed and went down in search of something to eat. No sooner had he sat down with his bread and _gratin au poisson fumé_ when Javert arrived.

"Where is your _bon ami_?"

"Still asleep.” Javert reddened slightly. "He is not as young as he seems to be."

"And I suspect you let him have little rest." Before Javert could come up with a retort, Snape pushed the bread toward him. "Have some. It's fresh."

With a quiet huff of disapproval, Javert tore off a piece of the bread. "Where is your own _bon ami_?" he asked pointedly. "Surely you did not manage to exhaust one so young?"

"He's teaching Cosette to ride a broom while her father can't watch and panic." Javert looked as if he, too, might panic, so Snape added, "I believe there is no cause for alarm. Harr-- that is, Potter has apparently gained in maturity in the past several months."

Javert looked as if he knew precisely which aspects of Potter's maturity had recently been on display to Snape but he bit back a comment, biting instead into the warm bread. "Since I have met you, I have broken the law more times than I can count," he muttered.

"Wizards have different laws. You're going to have to learn them -- all three of you. As a policeman, did you ever hear rumors about where the sorcerers hid themselves in Paris?"

"Outside the city in Montmartre," replied Javert, pausing to seek the proprietor to ask for eggs and coffee. "You can't expect me to throw in my lot with criminals."

Snape's own coffee had grown cold. Irritated, he whipped out his wand and used a charm to heat it as Javert jumped in his seat. "You've already thrown in your lot with criminals. At least be honest. Would you rather have spent last night dead in the Seine or exactly where you spent it?" He raised his eyes to the ceiling, indicating the room that Javert had shared with Valjean. When Javert looked around uneasily and busied himself with eating bread, Snape added, "No one can overhear us. With magic, it's as easy to garble a conversation for eavesdroppers as it is to make myself understood in your language. Which reminds me -- there's a very useful spell, _Silencio_ , that I should teach you before the next time you share a bed with a man strong enough to slam a wooden bed into the wall."

Embarrassment warred with pleasure on Javert's face, though where Valjean was concerned, Snape had no doubt that pleasure would win every time. He was about to say as much when the man himself appeared, looking not in the least bashful for the first time since Snape had met him. When Valjean spotted Javert, he broke into a wide, delighted smile.

The only thing that caused the smile to falter was the reply after he inquired about the whereabouts of Cosette and Harry. Snape thought that Valjean would push away from the table to go after them, quieted only by a reassuring hand on his arm. The look that passed between Valjean and Javert should have been dismissed as disgustingly sentimental, but Snape found himself smirking behind a hunk of bread. It was as if France, or at least the France of the past, had cast a spell over him, one which sapped his more rational thoughts and undermined his dignity. In another life he would have been out searching for the Weasley twins to demand surrender of their contraband love potions...

Snape felt the blood drain from his face. Covertly, while the two men at the table shot shy glances at each other and blushed every time their gazes chanced to meet, Snape studied them. He was fairly certain their hands were entwined under cover of the table.

There had been a feeling, practically from the moment he had arrived back in time, that somehow Dumbledore was behind all this, as if the most powerful wizard of his own age had eluded the grasp of mortality. Dumbledore was also the most ridiculously sentimental of his -- or probably any -- age. And Dumbledore had always believed above all things in the power of love.

Harry and Cosette arrived in a flurry of greetings and unclasping of hands beneath the table. To anyone else, spotting their windblown, pink-cheeked visages would have suggested they had been engaged in an amorous tryst. To his own surprise, Snape could hardly entertain the notion of jealousy, not when Harry's gaze sought out Snape's and his smile radiated the erotic promise with which he had left their bed.

Cosette too, energized and laughing, was full of tales for her beloved Papa, telling Valjean equally of the tumbles and the joy of soaring once she had learned the way of it. "You must come learn with me, Papa, and you too, Mr. Javert!"

They discussed the plans for their return to Paris away from listening ears. Snape said that he would need some time to prepare the Portkey, which elicited groans all around. Cosette, of course, wanted to fly on brooms. Valjean was all for hiring one of the carriages drawn by winged horses.

It was not until later, when they had returned to the beach to practice simple spells, that Snape found time to have a private word with Harry.

"I think I know why we're still trapped here," he began, setting aside the coal scuttle he'd borrowed to transform into a Portkey.

"Trapped?" Harry slid a finger along the ridge of the coal scuttle. "I mean, I know we're here and we aren't sure how to get back, but I don't think we're trapped."

"We weren't sent here to enjoy ourselves," countered Snape, watching as Harry Scourgified his coal-dust covered finger.

"But we are enjoying ourselves," Harry said a little wistfully. "Aren't we?"

Automatically Snape started to rebut him, but his mouth closed, leaving Harry unrebutted. "I suppose on the scale of adventures we've shared since you began your schooling, this one lacks trolls, dark wizards, cursed magical objects, or anyone trying to kill you."

Harry brightened at once. "I'm having a good time too. Now, what were you saying about why we're still here?"

Snape sighed. It was typical of Dumbledore to entrust such a task to a young man barely out of youth and to someone like himself with no experience of the necessary conclusion. "I think we have to make sure that those two middle-aged fools fall in love. It's the only way to be certain that they will stay together and follow Miss Fauchelevent to this region before the flood occurs."

It was Harry's turn to look haplessly at Snape. He glanced across the sand to where Valjean was chasing a crab that had been a shell just a moment ago. Javert dodged the encroaching waves, having refused to reveal his ankles while a lady was present, though Cosette had removed her shoes and stockings and was playing like a child in the warm water.

"I think they're already there," said Harry as Valjean managed the spell to change the crab back, halting abruptly just as Javert caught up, and the two men grappled precariously to avoid falling into the water. Cosette giggled even when her father and his friend were slow to disengage their hands.

"You know how magic works," Snape pointed out.

Harry nodded. "They've got to say it."

"Aloud," confirmed Snape.

"Well, however he feels, Javert strikes me as someone who's almost as unlikely to say such a thing as --"

Harry stopped himself, but Snape had already had the same thought. Javert was about as likely to come out with a flowery declaration of love as Snape himself.


	10. Chapter 10

It would be best, decided Snape, to deal with one potential crisis at a time. He went back to work on the Portkey, fretting about whether it was safe to direct Valjean to go hunting in Montmartre for a wizard who could teach them more advanced magic than they were likely to master while Harry and Snape remained in 19th century France. Both the Fauchelevents were willing to return to the Rue Torsade to shop for books that would allow them to study on their own, though Valjean was less than pleased when Cosette begged him to purchase brooms for them, too.

Javert stared for a long time at the crystal balls. "My mother had one," he admitted to Snape.

"She had a talent for Divination?"

"She could not have had much of a talent, or she could have warned my father before he was sent to the galleys for life." He scowled at the nearest orb. "She put her trust in playing cards and interpreting dreams, not in honest work."

"Perhaps, having seen how her people were treated, she had little faith in just rewards for such work." Valjean had stepped behind them, gesturing at the crystals. "Let me buy one. Perhaps one or the other of us might have some gift for it."

Javert's cheeks reddened. "It was Divination that led me to you in Paris," he told Valjean.

Harry and Cosette turned to listen. "What do you mean?" Valjean demanded.

"When you first arrived in the city with the child, when I pursued you, I saw a vision of you in the light of a street lamp. I very nearly had you, but then you disappeared in that alley and I could never summon the vision again."

Something dawned in Valjean's eyes. "I thought it was through God's grace that I escaped you," he said. "But I wonder whether God's grace turned my prayers into a spell to protect the child and myself." He reached for the orb at which Javert had been glaring. "Let me buy this," he said again, though Snape thought that Javert might object.

At Valjean's insistence they ate lunch in Marseille before returning to Paris. Snape found that he could not object, since the fish was delicious and the bread more flavorful than any he had had in England. While Harry and Cosette chattered about things like the Yule Ball and Fleur and Bill Weasley's wedding, Snape tried to find a way to broach the delicate subject that he and Harry had been discussing earlier. "Has Mr. Potter explained to you that verbal spells are usually much easier to master than nonverbal spells?" he asked. Both men nodded. "Then you understand that for certain types of magic, the spoken word is itself a necessary component. Even for men such as myself who might prefer reticence."

Again Valjean nodded. "Like prayer," he said.

Though Snape was not entirely comfortable with Valjean's insistence on seeing religion in magic and vice versa, he decided not to debate the point. "You have probably heard myself and Harry discussing how we arrived here and what we might need to do to return to our own time." He saw Javert smirk faintly and realized only then that he had called Potter "Harry" more than once in front of everyone. "We believe there may be a necessary verbal component."

"Like those in _La poule noire_?" Both Snape's and Valjean's eyebrows shot up as they turned to Javert. "The police were called upon to confiscate grimoires as well as seditious literature," added Javert defensively. "If one copies the grimoire's amulet and summons a djinn, reciting _Sader, Prostas, Solaster_ , the djinn is supposed to produce one's true love -- that sort of thing. I had imagined it to be nonsense."

"You know that we use incantations for spells, though it is illegal to use magic to attempt to procure one's true love," Snape replied. Though Javert's voice had been scornful as he described the grimoire's incantation, he nevertheless appeared to be satisfied to learn this. "But speaking of love --"

They were interrupted as a tray of sweets arrived, and by the time they had finished them off, it was already mid-afternoon. Snape thought it best to return to Paris before dark lest Toussaint should believe something had happened to them all and seek assistance finding them.

After their previous experience with a Portkey, everyone knew what to expect upon their return journey. There were fewer stumbles this time, though Harry looked like he was ready to fake one as an excuse to hold Snape's hand.

"I must tell Marius about our adventures!" declared Cosette, who again landed the most gracefully of them all. She hurried inside the house to change her dress. Valjean followed, saying that he needed to arrange a carriage for her and Toussaint.

In the flurry of arrival, Snape found no way to broach the subject uppermost in his mind: true love. After the evening meal, though Cosette had not yet returned, they retired to the parlor. Valjean professed himself eager to delve into one of the new books of spells they had acquired. From the entirely innocent looks and the not-so-innocent blushes, Snape wondered whether he had found a lubrication spell or some other sexual aid in one of the books.

For his part, Javert was occupied with his concerns about whether it would be possible to find the wizards who reportedly hid themselves in Montmartre without breaking any laws apart from those that governed sorcery itself. Snape was trying to decide upon the least embarrassing way to bring up their conclusions when Harry folded himself into one of the chairs and announced, "We think we've figured out what needs to happen for us to get back to our own time."

Both Javert and Valjean looked astonished. Snape thought he too might look astonished at Harry's perpetual lack of tact. "My friend, you must tell us how we can help you," Valjean said. "I will of course be sorry to see you go, because my expectation is that we shall never cross paths again. But it is fine news that you have found a way to return home."

"We may have," Snape clarified. "It hasn't been tested."

"What form does this test require?" Javert asked, leaning protectively toward Valjean. Perhaps, given his upbringing, he had seen the effects of magic gone awry.

Snape and Harry exchanged a glance. Snape made sure his clearly said, "You began this."

"Actually," Harry began, "you and Valjean are the key."

A smile flashed across Valjean's features. "Then we will do all we can to assist, for we are indebted to you for showing us the wonders to which we are heir."

"And the wonders of life itself," Javert muttered as though speaking solely to Valjean alone.

"Yes, well," Snape said before everyone broke out into song. "There is a fundamental relationship between intent, or emotion if you will, and the use of magic. In our case, we believe the meddling, er, power responsible for our travel here meant not just to ensure Cosette's future but the future of her loved ones as well. Thus it falls to us to be certain that the intent, as it were, is in full force before the spell can be completed, thus allowing us to return to our era. In this case, the wizard who taught both myself and Potter was particularly interested in the transformative power of love, since it was maternal love that protected Potter from a deadly curse, and it was the will to keep Potter safe that enabled me to aid him in fulfilling a prophecy..."

He realized he was floundering, for neither man looked enlightened. "Speak plainly," Javert requested, and Valjean looked over at him with gratitude in his expression.

"You just have to tell each other that you love each other," Harry said, exhaling in relief.

For several moments there was complete silence. "Both of us?" asked Valjean finally, awaiting Harry's nod. Valjean did not look relieved, and when he spoke, he would not look at Javert. "I'm truly sorry, but that is impossible."

"That's great," Harry said, leaning forward in his chair, then looking confused. "Wait, what did he say?"

"He said it was impossible," Javert repeated. His voice sounded as it had when Snape had first met him, flat and lifeless.

"But, but," Harry was sputtering. Had they read the situation so incorrectly? Javert had gone ashen. If they had been back beside the river, Snape doubted that he would have been able to persuade him not to jump in. He looked from one man to the other, trying to fathom where they had gone wrong, and, more importantly, how they were to return home if they were indeed mistaken.

Valjean shook his head sadly. "Javert is not a man to utter words that he does not mean with the utmost sincerity. His passions run too deep for him to toss aside a lifetime of discipline, particularly with a man such as myself. In time I might touch his heart, but though my own heart yearns for his declaration of love, I would not force it upon him like a duty."

Snape was about to roll his eyes and say that, based on the things Javert had been babbling about Valjean since five minutes after Snape had met him, it would hardly require force to ask Javert to say them to Valjean himself, but Javert started talking first.

"Valjean has always been skilled at making his own choices the responsibility of someone else." Anger twisted Javert's features. Snape couldn't decide whether this was an improvement on abject despair or even more of a problem. "He stole bread to save his sister's son, he fled justice to save an innocent girl, he prevented me from arresting him because he had to bring Pontmercy to safety. Now, it seems, we cannot send you home because he finds this task too odious to allow me to perform."

Valjean had gone pale. "That is not what I meant..."

"No? This is not one of your acts of charity?" A note of taunting crept into Javert's voice. Snape could see Harry flinch and was reminded unpleasantly of the look on Harry's face long ago when Snape had taunted him about James Potter's misdeeds. "Then if you are not evading their request for my sake, why not tell the truth? You are the one who doesn't want to say the words."

"I would say them with all my heart." Valjean leapt to his feet, only to fall to his knees in front of Javert's chair. "I would have said them last night. But you still believe me to be all those things you just said -- a thief, a criminal, a man who hides behind innocents to save himself --"

"And you believe me to be incapable of love. Perhaps you are right, and men like us can never change. How could you love me, knowing what I was?"

"I am the one who should ask you that question." Valjean's hands had found Javert's and clasped them. "I do not believe you to be incapable of love. I only did not dare to imagine that you could love me."

"If I did not love you, I would never have --" Abruptly Javert seemed to remember that they were not alone. Blushing deeply, he turned away from Snape's feigned disinterest and Harry's frank stare. Then he took a breath and spoke almost defiantly. "Of course I love you. If I did not, I would not be here...I would no longer be alive."

Valjean's breath caught, and he hid his face for a moment against their joined hands in Javert's lap. "You know I love you," he said, muffled. "You know it to be true, Javert. I have never lied to you except by omission. I would not say the words if I did not mean them."

A sniffle attracted Snape's attention. Harry was wiping his eyes. Snape would have made a snorting sound but his own nose was suspiciously sniffly. Then he realized something even more appalling.

"We're still here."

All three men glanced over at him. "Well, I'm out of ideas for getting us out of here," said Harry, not entirely dejectedly. "Maybe my other theory was right, and we'd be dead if we had stayed in our own time, so we got whisked away to here to save us."

"Perhaps the mechanism to save your lives in the future lies here, in the past," said Javert, looking relieved to have the conversation returned to practical matters. "Is there some magical herb which grows only in your past that could save you?"

"No herb could save me from the snake." Snape glanced at Harry. "Even at his most sentimental, Dumbledore would not have risked stranding us here. The danger that we would contaminate this era is far too great. He might have had some absurd romantic notion about the two of us, but he would never have violated time to such an extent. There must be some other explanation."

Valjean had turned to look at Snape, getting to his feet. "This Dumbledore knew about the two of you?" he asked.

"Not from me," said Harry, grinning a bit. Snape willed himself not to blush.

"Would he have saved you from the snake you spoke of if it would not have allowed you to be together in your own time?"

Harry looked less certain than he sounded as he said, "I hope Dumbledore wouldn't have set in motion whatever sent us here if he didn't mean for us to be together in our time. It would be too sad to have found each other here, only to lose that as soon as we got back."

Valjean looked strangely satisfied by this. "Then it seems quite obvious. Since the two of you are the ones who must return home, perhaps the spell can only change your circumstances if you are the ones to fulfill its requirements."

Snape had no idea what Valjean was talking about. He guessed that his expression revealed as much when Javert suddenly broke into a rare smile. "He means that the two of you are the ones who must declare your love," Javert explained in a voice that did not hide his smugness.

"That's --" But they were right. Of course they were right. Inwardly Snape cursed at Dumbledore but found that he could only imagine Dumbledore twinkling at him.

Harry looked almost as pleased as Javert, though he looked nervous as well, as if he thought that Snape might try to pull the same sort of evasion as Valjean. "I will if you will," he told Snape.

Before Snape had a chance to say anything at all, he found himself being kissed on both cheeks by Valjean. "Again I find myself in your debt," the Frenchman said. "I thank you, sir. We will bless your name."

"He's the Chosen One," muttered Snape, gesturing at Harry, who got the same double-kiss treatment while Javert awkwardly bowed his head to Snape, who returned the gesture. "There's no need to bless my name. I have done terrible things. Just remember to stop arguing and think about what's really important. Other lives besides yours will be saved."

"I think all of us need to shut up about having done terrible things," cut in Harry. "Let's stick to what's important." He smiled a bit at Javert, then at Valjean, and then he looked at Snape. "I do, you know. Love you."

From the corner of his eye, Snape could see Valjean take Javert's hand. Sighing a little, he said to Harry, "And you know perfectly well that I would not have sacrificed my life for you if I did not love you, too."

There was an odd sound like trumpets. All four of them glanced up to see where it was coming from.

Then the room and everyone in it disappeared around Snape.


	11. Chapter 11

"Harry?"

The voice was distant and worried. It also didn't have a French accent, which Snape, in his groggy state, was sure was important, but he couldn't remember why. Something swam in his vision when he opened his eyes. Potter. No, Harry, they had-- Snape tried to focus more urgently now but Harry's face was becoming more blurry and fading at the edges.

"Harry?" The voice sounded again, somewhere over Harry's shoulder, an impossible distance to Snape's drooping lids.

He found his own voice trying to echo the word. "Harry?" he said, as plainly as he could but it sounded more like a croak than a name. He had a flash of memory, of a white-haired man on a beach, chasing a scuttling crab, and he tried again. "Harry." There, that sounded quite satisfactory. The blurry thing in his vision smiled.

"I'm here, Severus," Harry said.

"Is he awake?" the other voice said, and Snape put the voice to a name. Granger. Harry nodded but didn't look away from Snape.

"I think so," Harry replied, smiling down at Snape again. "You are, aren't you?"

Snape nodded but Harry was already brushing his mouth over Snape's.

"Harry!" Granger said but Harry kept the kiss brief.

Snape had made out that he was in a bed, probably the hospital wing of Hogwarts because he could smell the familiar scents of medicinal potions he had brewed himself. That Granger was here meant they had made it back to their own time. Harry slid his hand into Snape's. "Welcome back," he said and Snape blinked.

"Didn't we -- together?" he managed, feeling the rough patches of his voice smoothing a bit.

"Mostly," answered Harry. "You were still down at the Shrieking Shack, nearly bled out." Still clinging to his hand, Harry lowered himself to one side of the bed. "But your neck had been closed over. Probably some kind of potion, Madam Pomfrey says. She put you under after dosing you with a blood replenishing potion and you've been under--" He looked over at Granger, who answered.

"Two days. Well, thirty-six hours actually, but near enough."

Harry's thumb was brushing the back of his hand as he smiled down at Snape. "Please tell me you remember everything? They all think I'm half mad here."

Slowly Snape nodded. "Everything," he said, gratified that Harry's cheeks went faintly pink.

"I have so many questions," Granger said, coming more into focus.

"Trust me, so do we," Harry said, giving Snape's hand a squeeze. "But I don't know if we'll ever get all the answers to them." He smiled again. "We were only gone about half a second here." He made a gesture with the hand not holding Snape's. "After the magical explosion when the Dark Lord's body --" He wrinkled his nose. "Well, did whatever it did, everyone said I sort of winked out, then when I came back I saw that I was right where I'd left so I thought you must be right where you were so --" His voice thickened and his grip tightened on Snape's hand.

"He was frantic until we found you in the Shrieking Shack," Granger said, not unkindly. "And worried until we made sure you were still breathing and--" She cleared her throat too. "And still with us," she finished softly.

"Who gave me the potion?" asked Snape, not liking the way his voice croaked.

"No one knows." Granger sounded anxious. "Madam Pomfrey said she wasn't entirely sure what was in it, let alone how it got there."

"I know 'ow it got zere," said a voice from the doorway. Though Snape couldn't see from his supine position, he recognized the accent at once as belonging to Fleur Delacour. "Madame Maxime gave me thees task. She said zat I must carry it out myself, because I am ze descendant of Madame la Baronne Pontmercy."

"Cosette," Snape realized. "We were talking about the snake with Val- with Fauchelevent. They must have left a message for their own descendants...for you."

Harry beamed at Fleur. "Madame Maxime made the potion, then?"

"I made ze potion." When Potter and Granger stared at her with the same surprise that Snape felt, she marched over indignantly. "I was ze best Potions student of any in my years at Beauxbatons! 'Ow do you think I was chosen to compete? Just because ze Tri-Wizard Tournament did not test us on refined subjects like Potions and Areethmancy..."

"Sorry," Harry said sheepishly while Snape nodded. He, too, had been irritated that the tournament had as usual emphasized showy heroics over the more subtle magical arts. "And thank you."

"Yes -- thank you very much," added Snape sincerely as new footsteps intruded on his awareness.

"Is he awake?" Poppy Pomfrey had come into the room and stormed over to them. "He needs rest! I told you to summon me at once if he woke!"

Before Snape could stop her, she had shooed the women out. Harry, however, refused to be budged. "You didn't even let me ask what was in the potion she gave me," objected Snape.

"I will find out. You rest," she ordered him, then peered at Harry. "Don't overstimulate him!"

Harry grinned wickedly at Snape, but after Madam Pomfrey went to chase after Fleur, he sighed a bit. "She means don't tell you about what went on in the battle."

"What 'went on'?"

Now Harry looked entirely serious. "A lot of people are dead on both sides. Fleur may be the only Weasley who's speaking to you at the moment. I'll just tell you the good news, all right? Professor McGonagall is fine, Ron and Ginny and their parents are all right, even the Malfoys survived. I thought about hexing the lot of them but Narcissa Malfoy probably saved my life. And Voldemort and most of his followers are dead. So, we won, and we're not dead."

With that, Harry nudged him over, settling against Snape's side in the too-small infirmary bed. "And we saved the world," he added, fitting himself to Snape's side. "This one and the one in the past." Snape didn't bother pointing out that they were all one world, just different time periods, because he still didn't completely understand what had happened to them and doubted they ever would. As if reading his thoughts, Harry asked, "Do you think we'll ever figure out how he arranged it?"

Snape let one arm drape over Harry's chest, ostensibly to support himself in the narrow bed, but actually because it felt good and after hearing how close Harry had come to being blown to atoms by the Dark Lord he thought himself entitled to a bit of indulgence. "We can try asking the portrait up in the headmaster's office," suggested Snape, "but no, I don't think we'll ever know everything."

"At least we know we did it right," pointed out Harry. When Snape didn't reply, he lifted his head and smirked. "I didn't mean _that_. I know we did that right. I meant that we must have saved Cosette and her family because she passed down instructions to her descendants." He muttered something into Snape's chest where his head lay.

"What did you say?" asked Snape.

Harry lifted his head again. "I said, though I wouldn't put it past Dumbledore to have used that task as an excuse to make us to admit our feelings for each other. It was certainly complicated and fraught with enough peril to make it his sort of thing."

"That is very keen insight," Snape said, checking to make certain no other students or nurses were hovering before kissing Harry's forehead. "And extremely cynical."

"Not cynical -- practical," said Harry, snuggling closer to Snape. "There are probably lots of people who'd have been really angry at you right now for telling so many lies, who are instead just glad you're not dead. And if I have to figure out what to do with my life in a world without Voldemort, I need to do it with you." His head lifted again. "You want that, right? It wasn't just almost being dead and magical necessity?"

"I'm not even certain we'd have come back here if we'd said the words only out of magical necessity," muttered Snape, wondering whether that meddling fool Dumbledore had had a contingency plan in case Snape and Harry failed to complete that aspect of the spell. He had the uncomfortable thought that Madame Maxime might have known about and told the headmaster of the two strange Englishmen who had visited Cosette Fauchelevent, which meant that Dumbledore might have been meddling for far too long. "But you are still very young, as Javert kept reminding me. And the celebrated savior. You may not always want..."

"I will always want," Harry interrupted him in a voice that brooked no argument. "Look how long those two in France kept missing each other because they just wouldn't accept what was right there if they'd just grab it. We're not making that mistake."

"I am still the man who killed Albus Dumbledore."

"And it's completely obvious that he forced you into that. Obviously he forgave you, and I forgave you. He made sure we got to start over -- he and Cosette."

Snape wondered when Potter had become so persuasive. He considered debating the point, but he was very warm and comfortable, and Potter felt so relaxed against him...

"I told you to let him rest!" shouted Madam Pomfrey, marching into the room and making both men jump.

"I was resting until you started shrieking like a banshee," grumbled Snape. "How long must I remain here?"

"At least another night," she said in a tone as closed to debate as Harry's had been. "And when I release you, there will be no talk of work. You are going on holiday for several weeks to recuperate."

"I hear that the south of France is a good place to recuperate." Sitting up, Harry somehow managed to sound almost innocent. "Cannes, Toulon, Marseille...do you know, I need a holiday myself. I'll go ask Fleur if she knows some nice out-of-the-way places to stay."

"See if that inn near the Rue Torsade still exists," suggested Snape. "It was...pleasant."

Standing, Harry flashed him a grin. "You mean romantic." He practically skipped to the door. "I'll be back after supper. I'm going to get Hermione to come to the library with me and look up that Crystal Ball of Amiens, see whether it actually helped anyone we know get what he desired most." He winked back at Snape. "Don't go anywhere."

"He won't," Madam Pomfrey promised in a rather threatening voice. "He will be right here. Asleep."

"Sweet dreams, then," called Harry over his shoulder cheerfully.

And though Snape was half-afraid to close his eyes, not knowing whether he might find himself on some other bridge facing some other crisis, he dreamed of swimming after Harry in the warm water of the Mediterranean Sea. Just at the horizon, he thought he saw a pair of older Frenchmen waving to him, but then Harry was in his arms, and they disappeared into the bright sky beyond.


End file.
